Posts Tagged ‘Journalism’

I have been thinking for a long time that maybe I should have a Twitter account to accompany this blog. But I always decided against it.

You all know that I write long, detailed posts that try to explain what really is going on behind the scenes. Which is absolutely necessary. You cannot explain complex international events and developments with thousands of years of history behind it in a soundbite of 7-10 seconds.

That’s the MSM/Old media/politician way. And they very carefully “chose” what they want to report or not.

But I now think it is time to try out Twitter as “soundbite” complement to this blog.

The lead words: Truth, Freedom, Justice, Responsibility and Accountability

As the blog, it is going to be a frank, open and interesting forum. Concentrating on the important “Stuff” that the MSM/Old media “chose” to ignore.

It’s not going to be an instant news type, More highlighting important news that MSM media don’t think you should care about,

Or the building of the new total mass surveillance states in the “democratic” west.

The summer is finally here after, again, being a cold winter and “spring”. Isn’t it “lovely” with this “accelerated warming” that sorry to say is not going on?

I want to wish every one of you a warm, in the name of Global Warming Hysteria, and nice summer. It will also mean that I will write less and more sporadic posts.

But you have 1193 posts and 2661 comments to go through at your leisure.

One theme of this blog has been to expose governments and the political elites attack on freedom and their aspiration and strive for total control of their citizen. The Global Warming Hysteria fits like a hand in a glove this agenda under the pretext of “saving mankind” from a non-existent “threat”,

The increasing and relentless drive of western governments for control of every aspect of their citizen’s life and against freedom of all kinds. And the mainstream medias/old media part in these efforts.

Which make a TOTAL MOCKERY of all the beautiful words in their constitutions and the official declarations by all politicians.

Not to mentions these governments signing of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Council of Europe’s Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the EU: s Charter of Fundamental Rights.

All these governments are in TOTAL BREACH of these signed treaties and their constitutions every second of the day.

And it is getting worse under one pretext after another. The most ingenious and hypocritical is that “they”, the ALL knowing and wise political elite, want “to protect us” from one thing after another.

Well, by this definition a slave is very “protected” and “safe”.

Oxford Dictionaries:

•Slave – a person who is excessively dependent upon or controlled by something

And remember these wise words that not many pay attention to anymore:

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”

Thomas Jefferson

So instead of me writing about the same thing again here are some excerpts and additions on these themes.

And I recommend that you read the rest of this post, ponder about it, and then come back and answer this question:

Are YOU going to behave like a sheep and voluntarily accept and give away your freedom and privacy for nothing? Or are you going to do something about it?

“I just went through the stats for my blog and as usual, I am blown away by the true international phenomenon this is. In the last month, I had visitors from 148 countries. (Last month it passed 155)

WOW!

And I don’t say this to be bragging. As I said before I am just blown away by what a true and awesome international phenomena blogging is. Especially when considering that I don’t have the time to actively promote this blog.

And as I said before, that’s why the powers that be fear the “free” internet so much. They have so far no gained the control they want. That’s why they do everything possible to regulate and stop it through various direct and indirect means.

Sadly, a lot of politicians and governments in the “free” world are willingly taking part in that onslaught. In fact, in some cases they are leading it.

What is also very interesting to watch is how the Mainstream Media/Old Media has reacted to the fact that today the blogosphere is doing most of the investigative journalism. Doing the “digging” and exposing uncomfortable facts for politicians, business and “scientists” that the Mainstream Media stopped doing a long time ago.

First, the reaction was to totally ignore the blogosphere. Pretend that it didn’t exist. When that was no longer possible. The reaction was one of attack. “Don’t think you can come here and teach us anything because we know best and always will”. They tried to put themselves on a pedestal “Because we are the REAL journalists”. We know what’s best for the people etc.

And most of the Mainstream Media/Old Media is still sadly there. Their arrogance is so ludicrous and stupefying that it is numbing.

Watching journalist describe ”things” is like watching a man being on a ”High Horse”, in his own “very important bubble” with NO contact with the real world whatsoever. It’s a fascinating spectacle.

I have been saying for a very, very long time that if you want to understand what is going on in the world and in your own country, DON’T watch the news on TV or read the newspapers. It is a total waste of time.

If you do, you understand less after watching/reading than before.

For the last say 40 years, there has been a steady decline in what used to be called “journalism”. Especially investigative journalism. Instead, it has been replaced by journalist and media that are driven by a political agenda. On purpose.

It is about controlling and setting the agenda. Not about reporting the facts. Or presenting the facts so that people understands what is REALLY going on and how that affect them. And hopefully make better choices.

They will ONLY print “news” that fits their agenda. If it does not, it doesn’t exist and never ever happened.

The Mainstream Medias/Old Medias deafening silence on many subjects, and their PC worldview is as far away from journalism that you can come.

Most of the Mainstream Media/Old Media has willingly and gladly become “His Masters Voice”. Even worse, the Mainstream Media/Old Media has willingly taken part in actively censoring and suppressing facts. A very sad fact for the democracy and an utter betrayal of what journalism is supposed to be.

You will find many examples of this betrayal in this blog. So, instead on being the defender and bearer of freedom of speech, the Mainstream Media/Old Media has become the slayer of it. “

“It is a very sad day indeed to see a people voluntarily decide to throw themselves and their country over the cliff.

The result, the US government is legally bound to spend more money on mandatory entitlements and interest than it can raise in tax revenue. It will not make any difference how high the federal, state or local government raise taxes, or even if they cut everything.

Another effect of Obama economics is that the poor are getting poorer, especially the black. Under Obama the poorest Americans has suffered the single largest drop in income ever.

And the Black Americans in the same lowest income quintile have suffered almost double as the average American in the same quintile under Obama:

The drop is– 11.58% in one year(2010) and is at the lowest level ever.

That’s what I call “change”!But I would not call it “hope”.

And the number of people classified as poor are getting larger and larger.

Then on top of that, we have the equally disastrous foreign policy. Where the Obama administration systematically have thrown their former allies (Eastern Europe, Britain, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia etc) under the bus, and helped parties like the Muslim Brotherhood that hate everything that USA and the western world stands for, to power.

See my 19 posts on Syria etc as some examples of that disastrous foreign policy:

But as the old saying goes (Joseph de Maistre in a letter from St Petersburg August 1811): a country has the politicians/government that they deserve. So enjoy!

In addition, this quote from a reader’s commentary in The Prager Zeitung in March 2010 (translated from Czech) sums it up quite well really:

“Multitude of Fools

The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president.

The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool.

It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.“

The even worse sorry state of USA – The mass surveillance of the American people:

And its get worse, on top of the above the “recent” discoveries of the TOTAL MASS SURVELIANCE IN REAL TIMR OF ALL THE AMERICAN PEOPLE (and their electronic communication).

And of course ALL TRAFFIC passing through American servers. This is 60-80% of ALL the internet traffic (depending of which type of traffic).

And that the big internet companies/software companies besides collecting and selling ALL the user information to other companies is ALSO in REAL TIME colleting and “sharing” ALL this data with US government agencies.

And these agencies store this information, your whole electronic and internet life,FOREVER. To be used at their whim in 10 or 20 or 40 years from now, if the powers that be thinks that you are a “threat” or in some way “interfering” with their agenda.

And this TOTAL MASS SURVELIANCE isn’t of course limited to the US. A lot of that is going on in EU countries too. And others.

For example, there is a very, very tight cooperation and sharing that goes way back (1946) between USA, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zeeland. And the Swedish FRA takes part in this cooperation. The “famous” ECHELON was an offspring of this cooperation.

This is way I started to put this sign after each blog post when the Swedish FRA started collecting data from ALL internet traffic passing Swedish borders on January 1st 2009.

And the absurd thing is that this TOTAL MASS SURVELIANCE WILL NOT ACCOMPLISH what is said to be the pretext for it – catching terrorists.

But of course it is excellent for controlling your own people and intimidating them.

Especially now when these agencies store this information, your whole electronic and internet life,FOREVER. To be used at their whim in 10 or 20 or 40 years from now, if the powers that be thinks that you are a “threat” or in some way “interfering” with their agenda.

And that’s why they are putting so much money and personal into these efforts, and trying so desperately to conceal this TOTAL MASS SURVELIANCE state from their own citizens.

“The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the UnitedStates, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation’s other findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings – about 17 million square feet of space.

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year – a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

These are not academic issues; lack of focus, not lack of resources, was at the heart of the Fort Hood shooting that left 13 dead, as well as the Christmas Day bomb attempt thwarted not by the thousands of analysts employed to find lone terrorists but by an alert airline passenger who saw smoke coming from his seatmate.”

They are also issues that greatly concern some of the people in charge of the nation’s security.

”There has been so much growth since 9/11 that getting your arms around that – not just for the CIA, for the secretary of defense – is a challenge,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in an interview with The Post last week.

In the Department of Defense, where more than two-thirds of the intelligence programs reside, only a handful of senior officials – called Super Users – have the ability to even know about all the department’s activities. But as two of the Super Users indicated in interviews, there is simply no way they can keep up with the nation’s most sensitive work.

”I’m not going to live long enough to be briefed on everything” was how one Super User put it. The other recounted that for his initial briefing, he was escorted into a tiny, dark room, seated at a small table and told he couldn’t take notes. Program after program began flashing on a screen, he said, until he yelled ”Stop!” in frustration.

”I wasn’t remembering any of it,” he said.

Underscoring the seriousness of these issues are the conclusions of retired Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, who was asked last year to review the method for tracking the Defense Department’s most sensitive programs. Vines, who once commanded 145,000 troops in Iraq and is familiar with complex problems, was stunned by what he discovered.

”I’m not aware of any agency with the authority, responsibility or a process in place to coordinate all these interagency and commercial activities,” he said in an interview. ”The complexity of this system defies description.”

The result, he added, is that it’s impossible to tell whether the country is safer because of all this spending and all these activities. ”Because it lacks a synchronizing process, it inevitably results in message dissonance, reduced effectiveness and waste,” Vines said. ”We consequently can’t effectively assess whether it is making us more safe.”

“But in the end, analysis requires human judgment, and half the analysts are relatively inexperienced, having been hired in the past several years, said a senior ODNI official. Contract analysts are often straight out of college and trained at corporate headquarters.

When hired, a typical analyst knows very little about the priority countries – Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan – and is not fluent in their languages. Still, the number of intelligence reports they produce on these key countries is overwhelming, say current and former intelligence officials who try to cull them every day. The ODNI doesn’t know exactly how many reports are issued each year, but in the process of trying to find out, the chief of analysis discovered 60 classified analytic Web sites still in operation that were supposed to have been closed down for lack of usefulness. ”Like a zombie, it keeps on living” is how one official describes the sites.

The problem with many intelligence reports, say officers who read them, is that they simply re-slice the same facts already in circulation. ”It’s the soccer ball syndrome. Something happens, and they want to rush to cover it,” said Richard H. Immerman, who was the ODNI’s assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analytic integrity and standards until early 2009. ”I saw tremendous overlap.”

Even the analysts at the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which is supposed to be where the most sensitive, most difficult-to-obtain nuggets of information are fused together, get low marks from intelligence officials for not producing reports that are original, or at least better than the reports already written by the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency or Defense Intelligence Agency.

When Maj. Gen. John M. Custer was the director of intelligence at U.S. Central Command, he grew angry at how little helpful information came out of the NCTC. In 2007, he visited its director at the time, retired Vice Adm. John Scott Redd, to tell him so. ”I told him that after 41/2 years, this organization had never produced one shred of information that helped me prosecute three wars!” he said loudly, leaning over the table during an interview.

Two years later, Custer, now head of the Army’s intelligence school at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., still gets red-faced recalling that day, which reminds him of his frustration with Washington’s bureaucracy. ”Who has the mission of reducing redundancy and ensuring everybody doesn’t gravitate to the lowest-hanging fruit?” he said. ”Who orchestrates what is produced so that everybody doesn’t produce the same thing?

He’s hardly the only one irritated. In a secure office in Washington, a senior intelligence officer was dealing with his own frustration. Seated at his computer, he began scrolling through some of the classified information he is expected to read every day: CIA World Intelligence Review, WIRe-CIA, Spot Intelligence Report, Daily Intelligence Summary, Weekly Intelligence Forecast, Weekly Warning Forecast, IC Terrorist Threat Assessments, NCTC Terrorism Dispatch, NCTC Spotlight . . .

It’s too much, he complained. The inbox on his desk was full, too. He threw up his arms, picked up a thick, glossy intelligence report and waved it around, yelling.

”Jesus! Why does it take so long to produce?”

”Why does it have to be so bulky?”

”Why isn’t it online?”

The overload of hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and annual reports is actually counterproductive, say people who receive them. Some policymakers and senior officials don’t dare delve into the backup clogging their computers. They rely instead on personal briefers, and those briefers usually rely on their own agency’s analysis, re-creating the very problem identified as a main cause of the failure to thwart the attacks: a lack of information-sharing.”

“Because so much is classified, illustrations of what goes on every day in Top Secret America can be hard to ferret out. But every so often, examples emerge. A recent one shows the post-9/11 system at its best and its worst.

Last fall, after eight years of growth and hirings, the enterprise was at full throttle when word emerged that something was seriously amiss inside Yemen. In response, President Obama signed an order sending dozens of secret commandos to that country to target and kill the leaders of an al-Qaeda affiliate.

In Yemen, the commandos set up a joint operations center packed with hard drives, forensic kits and communications gear. They exchanged thousands of intercepts, agent reports, photographic evidence and real-time video surveillance with dozens of top-secret organizations in the United States.

That was the system as it was intended. But when the information reached the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington for analysis, it arrived buried within the 5,000 pieces of general terrorist-related data that are reviewed each day. Analysts had to switch from database to database, from hard drive to hard drive, from screen to screen, just to locate what might be interesting to study further.

As military operations in Yemen intensified and the chatter about a possible terrorist strike increased, the intelligence agencies ramped up their effort. The flood of information into the NCTC became a torrent.

Somewhere in that deluge was even more vital data. Partial names of someone in Yemen. A reference to a Nigerian radical who had gone to Yemen. A report of a father in Nigeria worried about a son who had become interested in radical teachings and had disappeared inside Yemen.

These were all clues to what would happen when a Nigerian named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab left Yemen and eventually boarded a plane in Amsterdam bound for Detroit. But nobody put them together because, as officials would testify later, the system had gotten so big that the lines of responsibility had become hopelessly blurred.

”There are so many people involved here,” NCTC Director Leiter told Congress.

”Everyone had the dots to connect,” DNI Blair explained to the lawmakers. ”But I hadn’t made it clear exactly who had primary responsibility.”

And so Abdulmutallab was able to step aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253. As it descended toward Detroit, he allegedly tried to ignite explosives hidden in his underwear. It wasn’t the very expensive, very large 9/11 enterprise that prevented disaster. It was a passenger who saw what he was doing and tackled him. ”We didn’t follow up and prioritize the stream of intelligence,” White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan explained afterward. ”Because no one intelligence entity, or team or task force was assigned responsibility for doing that follow-up investigation.”

Blair acknowledged the problem. His solution: Create yet another team to run down every important lead. But he also told Congress he needed more money and more analysts to prevent another mistake.

More is often the solution proposed by the leaders of the 9/11 enterprise. After the Christmas Day bombing attempt, Leiter also pleaded for more – more analysts to join the 300 or so he already had.”

So you have nearly 900.000 people(nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C.),who hold top-secret security clearances. And they have access to ALL this data from the mass surveillance.

And at least half of the analyst analyzing this data is fresh out of school, no experience with the countries and the cultures they are analyzing.And of course they don’t speak the language.

And they ALL WANT MORE MONEY AND PERSONAL AND RESOURCES!

Reassuring isn’t it?

If you just read the text above (and below) and didn’t know where this was happening, you would automatically assume this was happening in some brutal totalitarian police state say like North Korea or China.

But it is not, it is happening here in the “democratic” west EVRY SECOND OF YOUR LIFE! FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!

“Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.”

“Inside, the facility will consist of four 25,000-square-foot halls filled with servers, complete with raised floor space for cables and storage. In addition, there will be more than 900,000 square feet for technical support and administration. The entire site will be self-sustaining, with fuel tanks large enough to power the backup generators for three days in an emergency, water storage with the capability of pumping 1.7 million gallons of liquid per day, as well as a sewage system and massive air-conditioning system to keep all those servers cool. Electricity will come from the center’s own substation built by Rocky Mountain Power to satisfy the 65-megawatt power demand. Such a mammoth amount of energy comes with a mammoth price tag—about $40 million a year, according to one estimate.”

“In 2011 more than 2 billion of the world’s 6.9 billion people were connected to the Internet. By 2015, market research firm IDC estimates, there will be 2.7 billion users. Thus, the NSA’s need for a 1-million-square-foot data storehouse. Should the agency ever fill the Utah center with a yottabyte of information, it would be equal to about 500 quintillion (500,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text.”

“The eavesdropping on Americans doesn’t stop at the telecom switches. To capture satellite communications in and out of the US, the agency also monitors AT&T’s powerful earth stations, satellite receivers in locations that include Roaring Creek and Salt Creek. Tucked away on a back road in rural Catawissa, Pennsylvania, Roaring Creek’s three 105-foot dishes handle much of the country’s communications to and from Europe and the Middle East. And on an isolated stretch of land in remote Arbuckle, California, three similar dishes at the company’s Salt Creek station service the Pacific Rim and Asia.

Binney left the NSA in late 2001, shortly after the agency launched its warrantless-wiretapping program. “They violated the Constitution setting it up,” he says bluntly. “But they didn’t care. They were going to do it anyway, and they were going to crucify anyone who stood in the way. When they started violating the Constitution, I couldn’t stay.” Binney says Stellar Wind was far larger than has been publicly disclosed and included not just eavesdropping on domestic phone calls but the inspection of domestic email. At the outset the program recorded 320 million calls a day, he says, which represented about 73 to 80 percent of the total volume of the agency’s worldwide intercepts. The haul only grew from there. According to Binney—who has maintained close contact with agency employees until a few years ago—the taps in the secret rooms dotting the country are actually powered by highly sophisticated software programs that conduct “deep packet inspection,” examining Internet traffic as it passes through the 10-gigabit-per-second cables at the speed of light.”

The other side of this surveillance state, the ability to use all this equipment, data and personal for cyber-attacks and cyber war efforts.

“In 2003, Alexander, a favorite of defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, was named the Army’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence, the service’s most senior intelligence position. Among the units under his command were the military intelligence teams involved in the human rights abuses at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison. Two years later, Rumsfeld appointed Alexander—now a three-star general—director of the NSA, where he oversaw the illegal, warrantless wiretapping program while deceiving members of the House Intelligence Committee. In a publicly released letter to Alexander shortly after The New York Times exposed the program, US representative Rush Holt, a member of the committee, angrily took him to task for not being forthcoming about the wiretapping: “Your responses make a mockery of congressional oversight.”

Alexander also proved to be militant about secrecy. In 2005 a senior agency employee named Thomas Drake allegedly gave information to The Baltimore Sun showing that a publicly discussed program known as Trailblazer was millions of dollars over budget, behind schedule, possibly illegal, and a serious threat to privacy. In response, federal prosecutors charged Drake with 10 felony counts, including retaining classified documents and making false statements. He faced up to 35 years in prison—despite the fact that all of the information Drake was alleged to have leaked was not only unclassified and already in the public domain but in fact had been placed there by NSA and Pentagon officials themselves. (As a longtime chronicler of the NSA, I served as a consultant for Drake’s defense team. The investigation went on for four years, after which Drake received no jail time or fine. The judge, Richard D. Bennett, excoriated the prosecutor and NSA officials for dragging their feet. “I find that unconscionable. Unconscionable,” he said during a hearing in 2011. “That’s four years of hell that a citizen goes through. It was not proper. It doesn’t pass the smell test.”)”

“In May, work began on a $3.2 billion facility housed at Fort Meade in Maryland. Known as Site M, the 227-acre complex includes its own 150-megawatt power substation, 14 administrative buildings, 10 parking garages, and chiller and boiler plants. The server building will have 90,000 square feet of raised floor—handy for supercomputers—yet hold only 50 people. Meanwhile, the 531,000-square-foot operations center will house more than 1,300 people. In all, the buildings will have a footprint of 1.8 million square feet. Even more ambitious plans, known as Phase II and III, are on the drawing board. Stretching over the next 16 years, they would quadruple the footprint to 5.8 million square feet, enough for nearly 60 buildings and 40 parking garages, costing $5.2 billion and accommodating 11,000 more cyberwarriors.”

“What’s good for Alexander is good for the fortunes of the cyber-industrial complex, a burgeoning sector made up of many of the same defense contractors who grew rich supplying the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. With those conflicts now mostly in the rearview mirror, they are looking to Alexander as a kind of savior. After all, the US spends about $30 billion annually on cybersecurity goods and services.

In the past few years, the contractors have embarked on their own cyber building binge parallel to the construction boom at Fort Meade: General Dynamics opened a 28,000-square-foot facility near the NSA; SAIC cut the ribbon on its new seven-story Cyber Innovation Center; the giant CSC unveiled its Virtual Cyber Security Center. And at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, whereformer NSA director Mike McConnell was hired to lead the cyber effort, the company announced a “cyber-solutions network” that linked together nine cyber-focused facilities. Not to be outdone, Boeing built a new Cyber Engagement Center. Leaving nothing to chance, it also hired retired Army major general Barbara Fast, an old friend of Alexander’s, to run the operation. (She has since moved on.)”

“One of the most secretive of these contractors is Endgame Systems, a startup backed by VCs including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Paladin Capital Group. Established in Atlanta in 2008, Endgame is transparently antitransparent. “We’ve been very careful not to have a public face on our company,” former vice president John M. Farrell wrote to a business associate in an email that appeared in a WikiLeaks dump. “We don’t ever want to see our name in a press release,” added founder Christopher Rouland. True to form, the company declined Wired’s interview requests.

Perhaps for good reason: According to news reports, Endgame is developing ways to break into Internet-connected devices through chinks in their antivirus armor. Like safecrackers listening to the click of tumblers through a stethoscope, the “vulnerability researchers” use an extensive array of digital tools to search for hidden weaknesses in commonly used programs and systems, such as Windows and Internet Explorer. And since no one else has ever discovered these unseen cracks, the manufacturers have never developed patches for them.

Thus, in the parlance of the trade, these vulnerabilities are known as “zero-day exploits,” because it has been zero days since they have been uncovered and fixed. They are the Achilles’ heel of the security business, says a former senior intelligence official involved with cyberwarfare. Those seeking to break into networks and computers are willing to pay millions of dollars to obtain them.

According to Defense News’ C4ISR Journal and Bloomberg Businessweek, Endgame also offers its intelligence clients—agencies like Cyber Command, the NSA, the CIA, and British intelligence—a unique map showing them exactly where their targets are located. Dubbed Bonesaw, the map displays the geolocation and digital address of basically every device connected to the Internet around the world, providing what’s called network situational awareness.

The client locates a region on the password-protected web-based map, then picks a country and city— say, Beijing, China. Next the client types in the name of the target organization, such as the Ministry of Public Security’s No. 3 Research Institute, which is responsible for computer security—or simply enters its address, 6 Zhengyi Road. The map will then display what software is running on the computers inside the facility, what types of malware some may contain, and a menu of custom-designed exploits that can be used to secretly gain entry. It can also pinpoint those devices infected with malware, such as the Conficker worm, as well as networks turned into botnets and zombies— the equivalent of a back door left open.

Bonesaw also contains targeting data on US allies, and it is soon to be upgraded with a new version codenamed Velocity, according to C4ISR Journal. It will allow Endgame’s clients to observe in real time as hardware and software connected to the Internet around the world is added, removed, or changed. But such access doesn’t come cheap. One leaked report indicated that annual subscriptions could run as high as $2.5 million for 25 zero-day exploits.

The buying and using of such a subscription by nation-states could be seen as an act of war. “If you are engaged in reconnaissance on an adversary’s systems, you are laying the electronic battlefield and preparing to use it,” wrote Mike Jacobs, a former NSA director for information assurance, in a McAfee report on cyberwarfare. “In my opinion, these activities constitute acts of war, or at least a prelude to future acts of war.” The question is, who else is on the secretive company’s client list? Because there is as of yet no oversight or regulation of the cyberweapons trade, companies in the cyber-industrial complex are free to sell to whomever they wish. “It should be illegal,” says the former senior intelligence official involved in cyber­warfare. “I knew about Endgame when I was in intelligence. The intelligence community didn’t like it, but they’re the largest consumer of that business.”

Thus, in their willingness to pay top dollar for more and better zero-day exploits, the spy agencies are helping drive a lucrative, dangerous, and unregulated cyber arms race, one that has developed its own gray and black markets.The companies trading in this arena can sell their wares to the highest bidder—be they frontmen for criminal hacking groups or terrorist organizations or countries that bankroll terrorists, such as Iran.Ironically, having helped create the market in zero-day exploits and then having launched the world into the era of cyberwar, Alexander now says the possibility of zero-day exploits falling into the wrong hands is his “greatest worry.”

Doesn’t that make you feel very safe?

And this is ONLY the US side of things. You have the same picture with more or less the same problems in Europe and the rest of these western countries.

“Britain’s spy agency GCHQ has secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world’s phone calls and internet traffic and has started to process vast streams of sensitive personal information which it is sharing with its American partner, the National Security Agency (NSA).

The sheer scale of the agency’s ambition is reflected in the titles of its two principal components: Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, aimed at scooping up as much online and telephone traffic as possible. This is all being carried out without any form of public acknowledgement or debate.

One key innovation has been GCHQ’s ability to tap into and store huge volumes of data drawn from fibre-optic cables for up to 30 days so that it can be sifted and analysed. That operation, codenamed Tempora, has been running for some 18 months.”

“Each of the cables carries data at a rate of 10 gigabits per second, so the tapped cables had the capacity, in theory, to deliver more than 21 petabytes a day – equivalent to sending all the information in all the books in the British Library 192 times every 24 hours.

And the scale of the programme is constantly increasing as more cables are tapped and GCHQ data storage facilities in the UK and abroad are expanded with the aim of processing terabits (thousands of gigabits) of data at a time.

For the 2 billion users of the world wide web, Tempora represents a window on to their everyday lives, sucking up every form of communication from the fibre-optic cables that ring the world.”

The NSA has meanwhile opened a second window, in the form of the Prism operation, revealed earlier this month by the Guardian, from which it secured access to the internal systems of global companies that service the internet.

The GCHQ mass tapping operation has been built up over five years by attaching intercept probes to transatlantic fibre-optic cables where they land on British shores carrying data to western Europe from telephone exchanges and internet servers in north America.

This was done under secret agreements with commercial companies, described in one document as ”intercept partners”.

Sum total: you have an enormous amount of people involved in this TOTAL MASS SURVELIANCE. ALL with access to OUR whole electronic and internet life.

George Orwell’s famous book 1984 is like a mild kindergarten heaven compared to what IS REALLY GOING ON in western “democracies”.

And last, never forget that nearly ALL the equipment and software used by brutal dictators all over the world to bring death and misery to their people, was sold by US and European companies. Why? Because they are “the best” at it.

Sounds very “reassuring” don’t it?

These companies installed, trained their personal and maintained this equipment helping these brutal dictators accomplish their goals.

“In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

”We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than only freedom can make security more secure.”

“And this is nothing new. We have seen so many different examples of this betrayal of journalist in their role as journalist. In this blog, I have given many examples when it comes to the Global Warming Hysteria.

Where the “journalists” and the mainstream media ACTIVELY choose to become propagandists and his master’s voice. Even worse, they ACTIVELY became attack dogs and tried to suppress and oppress EVERY dissenting voice and protest.

This is the ultimate betrayal of ALL what journalism is supposed to be. And the role they are supposed to play in a “free society”. Goebbels, and Ilya Ehrenburg (his soviet counterpart), would be REALLY PROUD of these men and women!”

“Or this is why the Euro is doomed. And after that EU – Yes we have NO Money.

On Saturday November 17, police officers from all over Spain marched through Madrid, protesting austerity measures and cuts. They even apologized to the public for arresting the wrong people. One of the slogans was:

”Citizens! Forgive us for not arresting those truly responsible for this crisis: bankers and politicians.”

The whole economic and political crisis in EU and USA summarized in one simple sentence.

“The European Union is like a hospital where all the doctors are mad. It doesn’t matter what is wrong, the treatment is always the same – more integration – and it is always wrong. The best thing to do is never to enter it.

Once you are in, the best thing to do is to leave. If you can’t get out, you will probably die.”

I disagree with one thing this author says: “EU is the Stupid Empire”. EU is a POLITICAL project. The Euro is part of that political project.

A lot of EU’s decisions make no economic sense whatsoever. In that regard, Peter Hitchens observation that “EU is the Stupid Empire” is completely right. Not to mention the enormous cost to the common people of all these political motivated but economically disastrous decisions.

The economic side was always a way to “sell it to the people”. Step by step. So that the political agenda could be slowly, but steadily implemented. Until it was too late. The political elites new ALL along that had the EU project been presented to the people for what it really is, people in ALL countries would have rejected it.

BUT EU was on purpose designed this way. So that the people could not stop this political project.

Never forget that ALL the political elites, irrespective of party or ideology, in the EU countries were behind this. With very few exceptions.”

The EU bureaucrats and the political elites always fall back, when they have nothing else to say in defence of the EU, that this is a “peace project”. Well this “peace project” has now created social havoc, riots, and put country against country, and groups of countries against group of countries.

Tearing apart the EU at it’s seems. And ALL of this because they, the political elites, literally AT ALL COST want to preserve the POLITICAL project euro. Which is the cornerstone of the federal super state of Europe.

As I have said before, this has nothing to do with economics; it’s ALL about politics,

And that is why so many people still don’t understand what is going on. Because from an economical point these policies are total madness. Ruining and lowering the living standard of most people. And the political elites know this. But the political project is MORE important.

Then there is Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Cyprus, France….

Just start adding up the GIGANTIC NUMBERS and be utterly horrified!

This is the situation that politicians and the banks have put the common people of Europe in.

They are literally ruining us all. And WE have to pay the price of their folly and speculations.

One more slogan from the protests – They are the same.”

”Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.”

“EU, the politicians and the bankers have shown by their action, and inaction, that they effectively have canceled the social contract with their own citizen.

That unspoken implicit contract between citizens and their rulers that is the backbone of a democratic society.

If you try very, very hard, it is still very difficult to underestimate the seriousness of what happened. This is a game changer. Most people, politicians and “journalist” has still not understood the seriousness and graveness of what happened on a local, national and international level There is so much that was broken ON PURPOSE, including the rule of Law.And the very foundation of the modern financial and banking system.

Which these measures where supposed to protect.

Now anything and everything can and might be done. Whatever boundaries that existed have been breached. There is no Law, no fences and no limits. Pandora’s Box has been opened.

To put it in perspective, this quote from January 18 2008 from Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank (2003 to 2011):

“For a small, open economy like Cyprus, Euro adoption provides protection from international financial turmoil.”

No comment whatsoever is need. Read it again and ponder the arrogance and irony of it.

And this quote from Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Junker. He was alsothe president of the Eurogroup council of euro-zone finance ministers from 2005 to 2013. In that position, he bears primary responsibility for communicating the euro-zone’s financial and economic posture:

“So why the lie?

I was told to say there was no meeting,” said Mr. Schuller (the spokesman for Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker), reached by telephone Monday. “We had certain necessities to consider.”

Such as?

Evening in Europe is midday in the United States. “We had Wall Street open at that point in time,” Mr. Schuller said. The euro was falling on the Spiegel report, which had overhyped the meeting. “There was a very good reason to deny that the meeting was taking place.” It was, he said, “self-preservation.”

Asked whether such deliberate misinformation would undermine the market’s confidence in future euro-zone pronouncements, Mr. Schuller, lamenting that the market had practically no confidence in pronouncements already, said “not at all.”

“The Web site EUobserver has video of Mr. Juncker, at a conference on economic governance in April, expounding on the practice and reasons for lying in financial and economic communications.

On the tape, Mr. Juncker says he has “had to lie” and, speaking about touchy economic topics, “When it becomes serious, you have to lie.”

And Jérôme Cahuzac, the Socialist budget minister in France, who had been tasked with battling tax fraud. Who just had to resign because he had an ”undisclosed” Swiss bank account. Minister in charge of battling tax fraud… resigns for having a secret Swiss account. Let that sink in for a bit.

French minister tasked with battling tax fraud accused of having Swiss bank account

French authorities have searched the Paris flat of IMF chief Christine Lagarde as part of an investigation into her handling of a 2008 compensation payment to a businessman supporter of ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, her lawyer said.

Police are investigating claims that Lagarde, when French Finance Minister under Nicolas Sarkozy, acted illegally in approving the €285m arbitration payout to Bernard Tapie.”

Also, remember that the Cyprus banks went trough the ECB new and “stringent” “stress test” 18 months ago with flying colors.

NO PROBLEM THERE!

These people REALLY know what they are doing don’t you agree?

There you have the setting. Remember, these people decide your fate and can take your money if they want as has been shown in Cyprus.

So let’s start with some of the points and facts:

1. Let’s start by saying that this “crisis” was known at least two years before it “happened”. And EVERYONE that should, know about it. And they DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about it.

On the contrary – they even managed to worsen it. Not small feet for our dear politicians and bankers.

The “troika” didn’t want to do anything until after the Italian election. Which didn’t go the way the EU bureaucrats wanted. In addition, since the Cyprus communist president from AKEL didn’t want to do anything to be the one that started “tightening of the belt”, the Troika decided to wait after the Cyprus election on February 17 and 24 this year.

Now the Troikas “man” Nicos Anastasiades was in power. And now the negotiations started.

In the meantime, what was originally a €6 billion bailout in the summer of 2012 was 8 months later a €18 billion bailout. Thanks to EU and IMF doing nothing.

Doing nothing, a favorite political “pastime”,has serious consequences, cost REAL money and effects REAL people in the REAL world.”

”It is incredible how as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say … that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement.”

Etienne de la Boetie’s The Politics of Obedience:The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude.

I just went through the stats for my blog and as usual, I am blown away by the true international phenomenon this is. In the last month, I had visitors from 148 countries.

WOW!

And I don’t say this to be bragging. As I said before I am just blown away by what a true and awesome international phenomena blogging is. Especially when considering that I don’t have the time to actively promote this blog.

And as I said before, that’s why the powers that be fear the “free” internet so much. They have so far no gained the control they want. That’s why they do everything possible to regulate and stop it through various direct and indirect means.

Sadly, a lot of politicians and governments in the “free” world are willingly taking part in that onslaught. In fact, in some cases they are leading it.

What is also very interesting to watch is how the Mainstream Media/Old Media has reacted to the fact that today the blogosphere is doing most of the investigative journalism. Doing the “digging” and exposing uncomfortable facts for politicians, business and “scientists” that the Mainstream Media stopped doing a long time ago.

First, the reaction was to totally ignore the blogosphere. Pretend that it didn’t exist. When that was no longer possible. The reaction was one of attack. “Don’t think you can come here and teach us anything because we know best and always will”. They tried to put themselves on a pedestal “Because we are the REAL journalists”. We know what’s best for the people etc.

And most of the Mainstream Media/Old Media is still sadly there. Their arrogance is so ludicrous and stupefying that it is numbing.

Watching journalist describe”things” is like watching a man being on a ”High Horse”, in his own “very important bubble” with NO contact with the real world whatsoever. It’s a fascinating spectacle.

I have been saying for a very, very long time that if you want to understand what is going on in the world and in your own country, DON’T watch the news on TV or read the newspapers. It is a total waste of time.

If you do, you understand less after watching/reading than before.

For the last say 40 years, there has been a steady decline in what used to be called “journalism”. Especially investigative journalism. Instead, it has been replaced by journalist and media that are driven by a political agenda. On purpose.

It is about controlling and setting the agenda. Not about reporting the facts. Or presenting the facts so that people understands what is REALLY going on and how that affect them. And hopefully make better choices.

They will ONLY print “news” that fits their agenda. If it do not, it doesn’t exist and never ever happened.

The Mainstream Medias/Old Medias deafening silence on many subjects, and their PC worldview is as far away from journalism that you can come.

Most of the Mainstream Media/Old Media has willingly and gladly become “His Masters Voice”. Even worse, the Mainstream Media/Old Media has willingly taken part in actively censoring and suppressing facts. A very sad fact for the democracy and an utter betrayal of what journalism is supposed to be.

You will find many examples of this betrayal in this blog. So, instead on being the defender and bearer of freedom of speech, the Mainstream Media/Old Media has become the slayer of it.

There are still a few rare exceptions from this, both journalists and newspapers. But they are getting fewer and fewer.

In you live in Sweden, you can now read one example of that. Maciej Zaremba excellent series on how the “New public management” philosophy, (which is loved by ALL political parties), has wrecked havoc in the Swedish Health system during the last 20 years.

And since I was checking the stats, I thought it would be interesting to see where most of my visitors came from during one year.

So here are my Top 30 Countries during one year:

United States

Sweden

United Kingdom

Canada

Germany

Australia

India

France

Netherlands

Belgium

Switzerland

Finland

Turkey

Brazil

Spain

Italy

Russian Federation

Ireland

Philippines

Norway

Denmark

Poland

Israel

Thailand

Lebanon

Malaysia

Indonesia

Saudi Arabia

United Arab Emirates

SyrianArabRepublic

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”

This is the second part about USA. Again, It ain’t pretty to say the least!

Where the same absurd Alice in Wonderland economic and political farce is playing out in the USA. And as in Europe it is, as usual, the common people who are paying the price.

And as in Europe, the US crisis is anything but over regardless of what the political elites are trying to tell the people in USA. In USA the role of ECB is played by the FED (the Federal Reserve), which creates money out of “thin air” to support the gigantic and increasing debt. And to keep the stock market going and lower the price of the dollar.

So that the federal US government can spend your tax money like a drunken sailor.

In USA, Goldman Sachs and the other investment banks, plus the big Hedge Funds, are pushing leverage to ridiculous and dangerous extremes.

If you read the Comptroller of the Currency, Administrator of National Banks, report for the second quarter 2012 “Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities”, you get utterly horrified of the totals of the open derivatives positions in the US market.

Four of the largest U.S. banks are walking an extreme tightrope of risk, leverage and debt when it comes to derivatives. Below you are going to find just how utterly exposed they are.

But first what is leverage?

Most people do not understand “leverage” and what it actually means. If they did, they would not sleep at night knowing what’s going on right now.

To put it simple: leverage means that these banks etc use a leverage of say 1:50 or 1:100 in their speculations. Which means that they only put up 1 of their own dollars for an investment worth 50 or 100 dollar. Their dollars are “worth” 50 or 100 times more than they actually are.

It ALSO means that IF “things” goes wrong way they LOSE 50 or 100 dollars for every dollar they invested in that trade or position. Or much, much more.

And usually when things goes wrong, it goes very fast when it comes to trading with these kind of leverages. So very quickly, these sums get astronomical. In a couple of days they can literally lose ALL their capital and more.

This has happened time and time again. Just to mention a few:

– Lehman Brothers (was the 4th largest inv. bank in the US).

– Bear Stearns

– American International Group

– Northern Rock (a medium-sized British bank)

– Washington Mutual

– American Savings and Loan

– Landsbanki and Glitnir

– Barings Bank

– Société Générale

– JP Morgan Chase & Co

– Morgan Stanley

– Long-Term Capital Management L.P. (LTCM)

As I said before, this is JUST A VERY SHORT LIST

This would not per se be a problem if this were a truly free and capitalist market. Because then these banks would go bankrupt and the owners and investors would lose their money. As they are supposed to do if the do bad business or trades.

But as we all know,this is NOT a free and capitalist market. Our “dear” politicians have “decided” that these banks with all their wild speculations are too important or to big, to be allowed to fail.

So instead, they have used taxpayer’s money and put whole countries at risk and in extreme debt just to bail out these banks.

And the banks knows that whatever speculations they do, REGARDLESS of how much or bad they speculate, and as you can see below their speculations are horrific, the politicians are going to bail them out with our tax money.

JP Morgan Chase

Total Assets: $1,812,837,000,000 (just over 1.8 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $69,238,349,000,000 (more than 69 trillion dollars)

Citibank

Total Assets: $1,347,841,000,000 (a bit more than 1.3 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $52,150,970,000,000 (more than 52 trillion dollars)

Bank Of America

Total Assets: $1,445,093,000,000 (a bit more than 1.4 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $44,405,372,000,000 (more than 44 trillion dollars)

Goldman Sachs

Total Assets: $114,693,000,000 (a bit more than 114 billion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $41,580,395,000,000 (more than 41 trillion dollars)

To sum up – TOTAL EXPOSURE TO DERIVATES for ONLY these four banks:

207, 375, 086, 000, 000 TRILLION DOLLARS!!!!!!!!!!!

TOTAL ASSETS for these four banks: 4,720,464,000,000TRILLION DOLLARS

So they can “cover” 2,27 % of the Total Exposure with ALL their Assets!

So who is going to pay for the “rest”: 202, 654, 622, 000, 000 TRILLION DOLLARS!!!!!!!!!!! if anything goes wrong?

Well, we know the answer to that doesn’t we. So far, it’s the common people, i.e. the taxpayers, who had to cover for all the banks bad speculations thanks to our dear politicians.

Take another look at those figures for Goldman Sachs. If you do the math, Goldman Sachs has total exposure to derivatives contracts that is more than 364 times greaterthan their total assets!

That is utter insanity, but everyone just keeps pretending that the emperor actually has clothes on.

And why are “our” politicians SO EAGER to protect these speculators?

To put these GIGANTIC sums into perspective lets compare with the GDP from USA and all of EU from 2011

There a lot of different way to calculate GDP and the figures for each year. Add to that exchange fluctuations, conversion rates etc. So the figures below comes from the same source (IMF) to make the comparison easier. And it is their conversion.

GDP USA 2011 – 15,094,025 billion US dollars

GDP EU 2011 – 17,610,826 billion US dollars

Total GDP for EU and USA 2011: 32,704,851 billion US dollars.

Lets compare these 32,704,851 billion US dollars with TOTAL EXPOSURE TO DERIVATES for these four above mentioned banks:

207, 375, 086, 000, 000 TRILLION DOLLARS!!!!!!!!!!!

VS

32,704,851 billion US dollars in COMBINED GDP of EU and USA

Anyone see any problem???

Problem solved all right. So just move on, nothing to notice here or worry about.

Because according to out “dear” politicians, bankers and political elites from EU and USA there is NO SERIOUS PROBLEM HERE. The problems in USA and EU are more or less solved etc.

So the ones that put as in the mess in the first place, very “reassuringly” tells us: “We take care of it”.

Yeah sure!

Let’s move on to another “bright spot” –the federal budget and debt. The figures are based on the 2012/2013 data:

2012 US Tax Revenue: $2,469,000,000,000

2012 Federal budget: $3,796,000,000,000

2012 Budget deficit: $1,327,000,000,000

US Federal Debt as of January 22, 2013: $16,471,084,067,491

Total interest paid on the debt in 2012: $359,796,008,919

Budget INCREASE between 2012 and 2013: $38,500,000,000

To make these gigantic sums understandable here is how these figures would look like for a “normal” family:

Annual family income: $24,690

Annual family expenses: $37,960. 154%of the annual family income.

Annual family shortfall borrowed from friends/neighbors etc: $13,270. 54%of the annual family income.

Total interest the family paid last year: $3,598 (at near 0% interest). Nearly 15% of the annual family income

Total family debt (mortgage, auto, credit card): $164,471.This is 666% of the annual family income.

Change in family spending this year: an increase of $385

This looks like a very responsible family wouldn’t you say?

And do you think this family would get any loans from the banks?

When you look at it this way, it really seems absurd. Yet it’s true… a slow motion train wreck. That any person with more than one functioning brain cell can see coming miles away. Except our “dear” politicians. They are in ACTUAL FACT increasing the spending AND the debt.

Here’s another way to look at the debt ceiling I found in a paper. It’s very symptomatic:

Let’s say you come home from work and find there has been a sewer backup in your neighborhood… and your home has sewage all the way up to your ceilings.

What do you think you should do?

Raise the ceilings, or remove the crap?

Well, or “dear” politicians are franticly at an increasing speed trying to raise the ceiling at the same time as the “sewage” is increasing EVEN MORE.

Yeap, there you have politicians in a nutshell.

Why fix the problem that they themselves caused, when the politicians can pretend that they are the giver of all gods and bearer of all gifts to all the people all the time.

And it doesn’t cost anything for anybody. It’s ALL free forever. And they all lived happily ever after.

It is a very sad day indeed to see a people voluntarily decide to throw themselves and their country over the cliff.

Let’s look at the economy (the figures are from the Congressional Budget Office):

In the Fiscal Year 2011, the federal government collected $2.303 trillion in tax revenue. Interest on the debt that year totaled$454.4 billion, and mandatory spending totaled $2,025 billion. In sum, mandatory spending plus debt interest totaled $2.479 trillion –. exceeding total revenue by $176.4 billion.

(Mandatory spending includes entitlements like Medicare, Social Security etc. which are REQUIRED by law to be paid. Congress in practical terms do not see this money, it is automatically deducted.)

For the Fiscal Year 2012, which just ended 37 days ago, that deficit increased 43% to$251.8 billion.

In other words, they could cut the entire Federal Government’s discretionary budget – No military, SEC, FBI, EPA, DHS, IRS, etc.- and they would still be in deficit by a quarter of a trillion dollars.

(Discretionary spending includes nearly everything we think of related to government- the US military, the Department of Homeland Security, IRS, EPA etc.)

The only thing showing any growth in the US, besides the debilitating regulatory burdens, is the national debt. It took over 200 years for the US government to accumulate its first trillion dollars in debt. It took just 286 days to accumulate the most recent trillion (to $16 trillion).

Last month alone, the first month of Fiscal Year 2013, the US government accumulated nearly $200 billion in new debtin just 31 days.

And the numbers will only continue to get worse. 10,000 people each day begin receiving mandatory entitlements. Fewer people remain behind to pay into the system. The debt keeps rising, and interest payments will continue to rise even more. In addition, the dollar is going to decline.

The result, the US government is legally bound to spend more money on mandatory entitlements and interest than it can raise in tax revenue. It will not make any difference how high the federal, state or local government raise taxes, or even if they cut everything.

Another effect of Obama economics is that the poor are getting poorer, especially the black. Under Obama the poorest Americans has suffered the single largest drop in income ever.

And the Black Americans in the same lowest income quintile have suffered almost double as the average American in the same quintile under Obama:

The drop is– 11.58% in one year(2010) and is at the lowest level ever.

That’s what I call “change”!But I would not call it “hope”.

And the number of people classified as poor are getting larger and larger.

Then on top of that, we have the equally disastrous foreign policy. Where the Obama administration systematically have thrown their former allies (Eastern Europe, Britain, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia etc) under the bus, and helped parties like the Muslim Brotherhood that hate everything that USA and the western world stands for, to power.

See my 19 posts on Syria etc as some examples of that disastrous foreign policy:

But as the old saying goes (Joseph de Maistre in a letter from St Petersburg August 1811): a country has the politicians/government that they deserve. So enjoy!

In addition, this quote from a reader’s commentary in The Prager Zeitung in March 2010 (translated from Czech) sums it up quite well really:

“Multitude of Fools

The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president.

The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool.

It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.“

P.S. If you are wondering about the title, see this video with music by Spike Jones. There is another long story behind the lyrics but that you have to find out yourself. D.S.

“But all I want to conclude to this is that we face a fundamental danger here. The fundamental danger is this: I talked about the defense of the First Amendment. The press’s job is to stand in the ramparts and protect the liberty and freedom of all of us from a government and from organized governmental power. When they desert those ramparts and decide that they will now become active participants, that their job is not simply to tell you who you may vote for, and who you may not, but, worse—and this is the danger of the last two weeks—what truth that you may know, as an American, and what truth you are not allowed to know, they have, then, made themselves a fundamental threat to the democracy, and, in my opinion, made themselves the enemy of the American people. And it is a threat to the very future of this country if that—we allow this stuff to go on. We have crossed a whole new and frightening slide on the slippery slope this last two weeks, and it needs to be talked about.“

An excellent summary by democrat Pat Caddell on the very sad state of “journalism” in America. And the utter betrayal by the mainstream media (press, TV and radio) of their role as journalists and protector of the first amendment.

Pat Caddell is a lifelong democrat and worked for the McGovern campaign. He also worked on the Jimmy Carter campaign, for Gary Hart, for Joe Biden, and Jerry Brown.

He was their election strategy and pollster man.

Pat Caddell is also the founder of Cambridge Survey Research, a public opinion pollster, and an expert in analyzing public opinion.

He has also worked as a consultant to various movies, TV shows, and documentaries etc.

And this is nothing new. We have seen so many different examples of this betrayal of journalist in their role as journalist. In this blog, I have given many examples when it comes to the Global Warming Hysteria.

Where the “journalists” and the mainstream media ACTIVELY choose to become propagandists and his master’s voice. Even worse, they ACTIVELY became attack dogs and tried to suppress and oppress EVERY dissenting voice and protest.

This is the ultimate betrayal of ALL what journalism is supposed to be. And the role they are supposed to play in a “free society”. Goebbels, and Ilya Ehrenburg (his soviet counterpart), would be REALLY PROUD of these men and women!

As I have told you before, I am a former journalist. But I quite in disgust because of what was going on. And this was way back. And compared to now it was as kindergarten then.

And to confirm the total incompetent Romney campaign, including the republican party establishment handling of it, Romeny said on Wednesday:

As if to prove this point, Mitt Romney has now told Jan Crawford of CBS News that the major media are not in the tank for Obama and that he has no plans to challenge liberal media bias.

“Later, Crawford asked Romney if the mainstream media is ”in the tank for President Obama,” as many conservatives allege.

”Well, I think we have a system of free press, people are able to provide their own perspective based on their own beliefs, I think there’s some people who are more in my camp, there’s a lot of people who are more in his camp, and I don’t worry about that,” Romney responded.”

And the headline for this news story: is ironically – Romney: Obama engaged in ”character assassination”

But Romney is not worried

Well, it is no surprise since one of the chief architects of the strategy behind the campaign is Karl Rove. The strategy is to be “nice”, to be cautious, no attacks and no confronting the biased media.

In the meantime, Romney is being slaughtered in crucial states by the “not so nice” attack ads and a merciless campaign by Obama.

If you look at the key 11 swing states (hold 146 Electoral College votes) won by President Obama in 2008 and thought to be competitive in 2012. In 2008, Obama won these swing states by a combined margin of 53% to 46%, virtually identical to his national margin.

In one month from the beginning of September until today, Obama has gone from 44-45% to 50-51%.

Romney has gone from 46% to 45%.

From roughly even to a 5-6% lead by Obama according to the Rasmussen Daily Swing State Tracking Poll. That’s the biggest lead Obama has had in a long time. We have to go back to the end of February this year to find similar figures when Obama topped at 50%.

I will not bother you with a lengthy analysis of the incompetent Romney campaign, and the republican party establishments hiring of the wrong people.

Just two quick examples:

Ed Gillespie, who Pat Caddell talked about, is a senior advisorto the Romney campaign. He started a lobbying firm with former Clinton White House counsel Jack Quinn, responsible for the pardon of Marc Rich, among other things.

Gillespie will make money no matter what happens on this Election Day. Or the next election. Etc. So do you think he is very much concerned about the media bias problem and who is really winning the race?

Another is his communications director and longtime aide Eric Fehrnstromon. Now famous for his comment to CNN in March, saying that Romney was in realty an “Etch A Sketch” man.

Implying that he has no firm believes, policies and positions. You can take whatever he says and you can shake it up and it will be gone and he is going to draw a completely new picture.

With “senior advisers” like this who needs enemies.

As a side not, the Swedish government has invited this Karl Rove several times for political and election advice.

They really know how to pick them!

In addition, they pay big (taxpayers) bucks for it too.

Pat Caddell September 21– “The Audacity of Corruption”

The text of the speech:

Thank you. Glad to be with you. This could take a long time, but we don’t have that, so let me just get right to this. I think we’re at the most dangerous time in our political history in terms of the balance of power in the role that the media plays in whether or not we maintain a free democracy or not. You know, when I first started in politics – and for a long time before that – everyone on both sides, Democrats and Republicans, despised the press commonly, because they were SOBs to everybody. Which is exactly what they should be. They were unrelenting. Whatever the biases were, they were essentially equal-opportunity people. That changed in 1980. There’s a lot of reasons for it. It changed—an important point in the Dukakis-Bush election, when the press literally was trying to get Dukakis elected by ignoring what was happening in Massachusetts, with a candidate who was running on the platform of “He will do for America what he did for Massachusetts”—while they were on the verge of bankruptcy.

Also the change from evening news emphasis to morning news by the networks is another factor that’s been pointed out to me. Most recently, what I call the nepotism that exists, where people get jobs—they’re married to people who are in the administration, or in politics, whatever. But the overwhelming bias has become very real and very dangerous. We have a First Amendment for one reason. We have a First Amendment not because the Founding Fathers liked the press—they hated the press—but they believed, as [Thomas] Jefferson said, that in order to have a free country, in order to be a free people, we needed a free press. That was the job—so there was an implicit bargain in the First Amendment, the press being the only institution, at that time, which was in our process of which there was no checks and balances. We designed a constitutional system with many checks and balances. The one that had no checks and balances was the press, and that was done under an implicit understanding that, somehow, the press would protect the people from the government and the power by telling—somehow allowing—people to have the truth. That is being abrogated as we speak, and has been for some time. It is now creating the danger that I spoke to.

This morning, just this morning, Gallup released their latest poll on the trust, how much trust—the Congressman [Lamar Smith] made reference to an earlier poll—when it comes to reporting the news accurately, fairly, and fully, and it’s the highest in history. For the first time, 60% of the people said they had “Not very much” or “None at all.” Of course there was a partisan break: There were 40% who believed it did, Democrats, 58% believed that it was fair and accurate, Republicans were 26%, Independents were 31%. So there is this contempt for the media – or this belief—and there are many other polls that show it as well. I want to just use a few examples, because I think we crossed the line the last few weeks that is terrifying.

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece which was called “The Audacity of Cronyism in Breitbart, and my talk today is “The Audacity of Corruption.” What I pointed out was, that it was appalling that Valerie Jarrett had a Secret Service detail. A staff member in the White House who is a senior aide and has a full Secret Service detail, even while on vacation, and nobody in the press had asked why. That has become more poignant, as I said, last week, when we discovered that we had an American ambassador, on the anniversary of 9/11, who was without adequate security—while she still has a Secret Service detail assigned to her full-time, at a massive cost, and no one in the media has gone to ask why.

The same thing: I raised the question of David Plouffe. David Plouffe, who is the White House’s Senior Advisor—and was Obama’s campaign manager last time, he and [David] Axelrod sort of switched out, Axelrod going back to Chicago for the campaign—and just after it was announced that he was coming, an Iranian front group in Nigeria gave him $100,000 to give two speeches in Nigeria. Now, let me tell you: There’s nobody that hands—no stranger gives you $100,000 and doesn’t expect something in return, unless you live in a world that I don’t. And no one has raised this in the mainstream media. He was on with George Stephanopoulos, on ABC, a couple of weeks ago, and they were going through all these questions. No one asked him whatsoever about that. He was not inquired. George Stephanopoulos, a former advisor to Bill Clinton—who every morning, while Rahm Emmanuel was Chief of Staff, had his call with Rahm Emmanuel and James Carville, and the three of them have been doing it for years—and he is held out as a journalist.He has two platforms. I mean, he’s a political hack masquerading as a journalist. But when you don’t ask the questions you need to ask of someone like David Plouffe, who’s going in the White House—when we’re talking about Iran. I just finishedsurveys , some of you may have seen, with John McLaughlin this week, with Secure America Now , and found out just how strongly Americans are concerned with Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, what’s happening in the Middle East, and cuts in defense spending. This is not the place for that, but it strikes me as the American people identify, in the polling we’ve done over the last year, Iran as the single greatest danger to the United States. And here’s a man who’s being paid by an already named front group for that—for a terrorist regime, and is not asked about it, or queried about it!

The third thing I would say is that—then there’s of course [National Security Advisor] Tom Donilon, who I know very well from years back, who I caused a little bit of a stir over a few months ago when I said he was the “leaker-in-chief.” I mean this ridiculous running around—“How did these secrets get out?”—when it is clear he has no credentials for foreign policy; who has been in the White House; who was a political operative for Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter, and others;who was known to have, in my opinion, to be just the most amoral person I know in politics; and who is using and orchestrating national security. In Mr. [David] Sanger’s book [Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power], as a reviewer at [The New York Times] said, “The hero of this book, and the clear source of it, is Tom Donilon”—but let me just make a point. Neither does—and I would say this to the Congressman—“You know, all the Republicans have to do”—you know, I talk often about the “Corrupt Party” and the “Stupid Party,”but the Stupid Party couldn’t be stupider when it comes to things like this. They could have called Tom Donilon and other people down to the Congress, put them under oath, and asked them if they had leaked. Instead you have Eric Holder, who runs the most political Justice Department since John Mitchell—only in John Mitchell’s administration we had Justice Departments that were so politicized and so corrupted by politics—and he appoints someone who gave two people to do a study on the leaks, sometime in the next century will come out, and one of them is a, was a contributor to Barack Obama when he was a state Senator. That’s a really unbiased source! And the press, of course, won’t look into this. It will not ask the question. But the Republicans could have called them down. Yes, the President could have extended Executive Privilege, but let him say “I will not answer that question, sir” on the question of “Did you leak these secrets that Dianne Feinstein, the Chairman, the Democratic Chairman, of the Senate Intelligence Committee said were endangering national security and American lives?” As she said when she read Sanger’s book, “My God, every page I turn I learn something that I don’t know!” I mean, these are serious matters but in Washington they’re playful, and the press does not pursue any of them.

Peter Schweizer has done a study talking about corruption. 60%, or 80% —it’s closer to 80% I think, now—of the money given under the stimulus to green energy projects—the President and this administration’s great project—has gone to people who are either bundlers or major contributors to Barack Obama. But nobody says a word. Of course Republicans don’t raise it because in Washington, they simply want to do it when they get back in power. And, of course, the press doesn’t because they basically have taken themselves out of doing their job.

When we see what happened this week in Libya—and when I said I was more frightened than I’ve ever been, this is true, because I think it’s one thing that, as they did in 2008, when the mainstream press, the mainstream media and all the press, jumped on the Obama bandwagon and made it a moral commitment on their part to help him get elected in a way that has never happened, whatever the biases in the past. To give you an example of the difference, I’ll just shortly tell you this: In 1980, when [Jimmy] Carter was running for reelection, the press—even though 80% of them, after the election, reporters said they voted for Carter over [Ronald] Reagan, or 70% percent of them, a very high percentage—they believed, so much, that the Carter campaign and the Carter White House had abused the Rose Garden against [Ted] Kennedy that they made a commitment, as they discussed, that they would not serve as the attack dogs on Reagan for the Carter White House because they thought it was unfair and they weren’t to be manipulated. I totally disagree with their analysis, but that was when you actually had a press corps. Whatever their own personal feelings, they made judgments that were, “We’re not going to be manipulated.” This press corps serves at the pleasure of this White House and President, led by people like Ezra Klein and JournoList, where they plot the stories together. The problem here is that no one will name names.

But I want to talk about this Libyan thing, because we crossed some lines here. It’s not about politics. First of all we’ve had nine day of lies over what happened because they can’t dare say it’s a terrorist attack, and the press won’t push this.Yesterday there was not a single piece in The New York Times over the question of Libya. Twenty American embassies, yesterday, were under attack. None of that is on the national news. None of it is being pressed in the papers. If a President of either party—I don’t care whether it was Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton or George Bush or Ronald Reagan or George H. W. Bush—had a terrorist incident, and got on an airplane after saying something, and flown off to a fundraiser in Las Vegas, they would have been crucified! It would have been—it should have been the equivalent, for Barack Obama, of George Bush’s “flying over Katrina” moment. But nothing was said at all, and nothing will be said.

It is one thing to bias the news, or have a biased view. It is another thing to specifically decide that you will not tell the American people information they have a right to know, and I choose right now, openly, and this is—if I had more time I’d do all the names for it—but The New York Times, The Washington Post, or the most important papers that influence the networks, ABC, NBC, and, to a lesser extent—because CBS has actually been on this story, partly because the President of Libya appeared on [Bob Schieffer’s Face the Nation] and said, on Sunday, while [U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.] Susan Rice was out—the U.N. Ambassador has no portfolio on this matter—lying, said of the Secretary—you know why, notice the Secretary of State wasn’t out there doing this—was on national television, lying and promoting the White House line while the Libyan President, the very same moment, is saying “This is a premeditated attack.”Nobody has asked that question. This morning—take a look at The New York Times this morning, it’s a minor reference. Oh, now we’ve decided that it was a terrorist incident. But this is—that would have changed, that should change the politics.

This is not without accomplices, because the incompetence of the [Mitt] Romney campaign, which I said a week ago is the—my God!—the worst campaign in my lifetime, and the Republican establishment in general’s inability to fight, has allowed these things to happen in part because they don’t do it. But I want to go through two other quick points.

[Mohamed] Morsi and Egypt: The President of Egypt, we find out now, that his whole agenda has been getting the “Blind Sheikh” [Omar Abdel-Rahman], who’s responsible for the bombings of the WorldTradeCenter in 1993, out of jail. Prison. I’ve been told specifically, by a member of the intelligence community that the White House and State Department are negotiating that now. They have now come out and denied it, but [Morsi] comes out, that they ordered—he’s the head of the Muslim Brotherhood! The American people know what they think of the Muslim Brotherhood: They are against them eleven to one, all right? And he’s the president of the Muslim Brotherhood, giving $2 billion to United States. He tells them—we had advance warning because they had said they were gonna do this, attack our embassy. The President—after the incident, after 48 hours, Mr. Morsi does nothing and says nothing—picks up the phone, calls him, and demands that they call it off. On Friday—last Friday, a week ago today—there was supposed to be a big demonstration. We thought that would be the big day—no, it disappeared, because Morsi called it off. But no press person has investigated this, just as no press person will go and ask the most obvious questions, when there are really good stories here, good media stories, and good news stories. They are in the tank and this is a frightening thing.

Another example has been the polling, which everyone wants to talk to me about. Look: There is no doubt that Romney is blowing an election he could not lose, and has done everything he can to lose it. But the bias, the polling, it’s very complicated. Some of it is error, some of it is miscalculation, but some of it is deliberate, in my opinion—to pump up the numbers using 2008 base to give a sense of momentum to the Obama campaign. When I have polls that have the preference of Democrats over Republicans higher than it was in 2008, which was a peak Democratic year, I know I am dealing with a poll that shouldn’t be reported. And yet they are being done, and they are being done with that knowledge and with that basis for some people, and the answer, as I said, some of it is incompetence, some of it is they just don’t know, really know, how to handle it, and some of it is on purpose, and it’s purposeful. But all of it is just to serve a basic point, just as JournoList was—Mr. Klein’s JournoList—but as I said there is no pushback. We have a political campaign where, to put the best metaphor I can on it, where the referees on the field are sacking the quarterback of one team, tripping up their runners, throwing their bodies in front of blockers, and nobody says anything. The Republicans don’t. The reason you will lose this battle is for one reason. Despite organizations like AIM and others who are pointing this out, and the fact that 60% of the American people are in on the secret here—I mean, they’re no idiots—Republicans and those candidates who are not the candidates of the press refuse to call them out. If I were the Romney campaign I would’ve been doing this for months! I’d have been looking at individual reporters! I would be telling the American people, “They’re not trying to stop me; they’re trying to stop you! And they are here to do this!”And I would have made the press themselves an issue because, until you do, what happens is, they are given the basic concession of authenticity and accuracy, or that they are credible, by not doing that.

Now too many reporters, too many political people in the Republican party in this town, want to maintain their relationships with the press. This is how Sarah Palin got handed over to Katie Couric and to ABC before she was ready—because Steve Schmidt and others want to preserve their view, their relationships with the press. You know, people have their own agendas, and often it’s not winning. But this not-pushing-back is a problem, and they don’t do it. And, you know what this is a different era: The old argument of “You don’t attack someone in the press”—or “You don’t get in a pissing match with someone who buys ink by the barrel”—doesn’t apply anymore. There are too many outlets, too many ways to do it, and the country doesn’t have the confidence in the press that they once had.

But all I want to conclude to this is that we face a fundamental danger here. The fundamental danger is this: I talked about the defense of the First Amendment. The press’s job is to stand in the ramparts and protect the liberty and freedom of all of us from a government and from organized governmental power. When they desert those ramparts and decide that they will now become active participants, that their job is not simply to tell you who you may vote for, and who you may not, but, worse—and this is the danger of the last two weeks—what truth that you may know, as an American, and what truth you are not allowed to know, they have, then, made themselves a fundamental threat to the democracy, and, in my opinion, made themselves the enemy of the American people. And it is a threat to the very future of this country if that—we allow this stuff to go on. We have crossed a whole new and frightening slide on the slippery slope this last two weeks, and it needs to be talked about. And so that’s as much as I can do in twenty minutes. So then we—we have a few moments for questions. Yes, sir?

ARONOFF: Let’s get a few questions here.

AUDIENCE MEMBER : Yes, I wanted to offer my interpretation for why this dynamic is happening. I’d like your reaction. I think that the media is working with the government, because the government hands out so many freebies—

CADDELL: Yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: —you know, for market share, and, therefore, they have to work in sync with them in order to ensure the good graces. I think, also, the advertisers who generate the revenue for the newspapers are also getting those freebies, and so they can then influence the media—

CADDELL: The corruption in this town is so great. Everybody in Washington seems to almost be on the take—with the exception of everybody in this room, and the assistants here. But, I swear to God, it’s so—the idea that I should get something, you know—the reason, when you have firms that have Ed Gillespie in business with Jack Quinn, who was the counsel for Bill Clinton, and responsible for the pardon of Marc Rich, among other things, is because everybody in this—those people on K Street, in both parties, are about arrangements and money. Everyone in the press is. We have stimulus money being given. We have people who, as I said, the relationships, when people are making contracts, and their husbands and wives are getting—Jay Carney’s wife works in the government! Now he works—he was the head of the Time Magazine! He was a liar then, and a liar now, apparently! You know—and nobody says there’s anything wrong with this. And you’re right: Everybody’s on the take here, and everybody’s cutting up their stock. That’s why, what used to be one of the best and most important things for the press, which was the investigative journalism of corruption and money, the stealing of the taxpayers, the looting of the Treasury, isn’t an issue, and why no one speaks of it in this town. Yes, sir?

AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: Pat, just a quick question. Is it in violation—can it be seen as a violation of their charter for the major networks to demonstrate such obvious bias? I mean, is that a violate their FCC license agreements?

CADDELL: Well, their license agreements only go to their stations. They don’t really go to the networks themselves. But I—you see, that’s why we’re at this slippery slope. This is what scares me. Because you start saying, “Well, somebody should do something about this.”

My argument, when I speak to the press, is very simple: One day you’re going to get my combination of George Wallace and Huey Long running for public office. He’s going to get up and say how—he’s going to point out “How the press is going to get me, and let me tell you what they’re going to say about me, because they want to stop me,” and he’s going to say, “You know what? We’ve gone too far with this First Amendment stuff. We need to make them serve the people.” We’re sliding toward a system by establishing the fact that the press, in fact, has prostituted themselves in the service of a political party, or a political candidate, and once you go down this road and say, “That’s happening,” then people say, “Why do we need a First Amendment? Why should we protect them? They’re not protecting us.” That’s the threat here. That’s the danger that I worry about, because we desperately need a real free press, whatever its faults, that protects the people. And soon, they will be owned by the people—we’re getting very close to that. Watching the coverage of this stuff, in the last ten days, on Libya, and the press corps and the networks serving as nothing but offshoots of the White House Press Office, is really scary. We’re going to get to this question, because that is down that road. These people are going to destroy freedom in America. I don’t care about their partisan preferences, I care that, in the end of the day, somebody’s going to say, “Enough of this!” And somebody will carry the day, and that’ll be that. Yes, sir?

AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: Thank you. You—thank you! Incredibly good twenty minutes! I agree with everything you said! I am very concerned about Romney’s poor campaign, combined with the media bias the way it is. Is there anything that Romney can do at this point?

CADDELL: Well, he should’ve been out there already! He should’ve been out there pushing back—and so should the Republican establishment. The Republican establishment, as I said, in this town—I mean, all they seem to be in the business, to me, a lot of the establishment, is getting a lot of money to line their pockets, and not fighting or doing things that are effective. Why aren’t they out there challenging this? Why isn’t Romney himself getting up and saying, “I’m running against two organizations: I’m running against the Democrats and the President, and I’m running against the mainstream media, which will not tell you the truth”? Now let me tell you something: You want to liven up some of your rallies? That’ll do it. But they don’t do it because this man dares to be cautious. He’s going to dare-to-be-cautious himself right out of a race that was his to lose, and he’s losing it.

ARONOFF: One last question. Anybody? Go ahead.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 5: Are there no patriots in the media who—

CADDELL: Oh, yes, there are! There are some.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 5: Do they not see where—

CADDELL: Well, the problem is—let me say this—because nobody raises the question, because no one raises from the viewpoint that I’m raising it from. To raise it from the viewpoint where Republicans or conservatives “We don’t like what you’re doing to us,” only makes them dismiss that. What is not to be dismissed is what this is doing, and what it is in terms of the specifics of challenge. These individual reporters—let me tell you something about the press: Reporters become reporters and don’t enter the political fray because, basically, they can’t stand the heat. That’s my experience. You ever watch reporters under attack in a public venue and so forth? They wilt like—they melt like ice on the equator. The fact is that they need to be called out. Their organizations need to be called out. Ezra Klein still writes for The Washington Post? I mean, this is unbelievable!They had a secret operation group, “Journo” group, online, coordinating how they would promote Obama, and how they would attack Republicans—and he’s still there? But nobody calls out the publisher, or the editor, or whatever—there is no effort here—or calls him.

The fact is, if I were out there, if I were doing one of these campaigns, I wouldn’t let one of these guys by with anything. I would make the fact that the American people, already expressed in the Gallup poll, say—I would give them all the evidence they need to confirm their beliefs. I would change the dialogue here. But until that happens, you’re gonna have two teams—your whole team has an echo chamber of support—attacking you. How do you ever expect to win? Really? I mean, you can when it’s the national tide, 1980. We have a different press now. They have now made the decision they will control the political process. They are serving—with the hundreds of millions of dollars that the networks and these newspapers are, in effect, contributing—in-kind contributions to candidates in the Democratic Party. That’s the legal issue that I would have been exploring. I mean, I would begin to put the heat on.

But the Republicans never said a word. When Comcast, which bought out the administration—they’re my cable company in Charleston, they’re just so bad, I guess every cable company is awful, but they’re the worst—buys a network, is allowed to buy a network—the Justice Department allowed this—no Republican stood up and said, “This should be stopped!” I mean, really! You get what you ask for. So, anyway, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to go do TV.

”UN mediator Kofi Annan’s plan for Syria was ”on track,” though progress in implementing the ceasefire is slow, his spokesperson said Friday.

”The Annan plan is on track and a crisis that has been going on for over a year is not going to be resolved in a day or a week,” Ahmad Fawzi, the UN and Arab League envoy’s spokesperson, told journalists in Geneva.

”There are signs on the ground of movement, albeit slow and small,” he added.

”Some heavy weapons have been withdrawn, some heavy weapons remain. Some violence has receded, some violence continues. And that is not satisfactory, I’m not saying it is.”

Overall, Fawzi said, the plan and the UN observers who are on the ground overseeing its implementation—a team he reported had grown to about 50 by Friday—have had an impact.

But he decried continuing violence between President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and opposition forces in a conflict that has killed more than 11,000 people since flaring in March 2011.

”This is a difficult and complex mediation effort. There are days when things are progressing in a satisfactory manner and there are days where we feel that it’s a rough ride,” he said.

”However having said that, even on the days that we feel there is satisfactory progress… we are horrified by the extent of the violence that we see on the ground.”

So let’s see if I get this right: UN is horrified by the extent of the violence even on “good” daysbut STILL the Annan plan IS ON TRACK!

That in a nutshell is UN/Kofi Annan “ceasefire” and peace plan and logic for you.

International diplomacy at it’s best.

So here are some examples of the UN peace plan and how on “track” it is:

Remember that these leaked videos were filmed by the Assad militia, thugs, intelligence people etc. to show how “good”, loyal and efficient they are:

“GRAPHIC LEAKED VIDEO – ASSAD’S FORCES FILM THEIR LATEST MASSACRE. Another macabre ‘trophy’ for their collection of murdered Syrians. All in the name of their master, Bashar Al Assad.”

“GRAPHIC LEAKED VIDEO – ASSAD’S FORCES MURDER TWO YOUNG MEN THEN STRAP THEIR BODIES TO THEIR TANK TO PARADE THEM. (Date & Location Unknown) This is what Assad’s forces do. This is who they are. Animals.”

“VERY GRAPHIC LEAKED VIDEO – ASSAD’S FORCES FILM THEIR LATEST MASSACRE AND CONGRATULATE THEMSELVES. The cameraman says at one point (about the dead men) “hahaha, they were making coffee!, they even drink coffee” … Assad’s forces say this because it helps them de-humanize their victims .. using words such as “them” and exclaiming such facts as “they even drink coffee (like us)”.

This has been the key element to Assad’s hodl on power, his ability to convince his mercenaries that the people they murder are not human and deserve a brutal death. No matter if they are men, women or children.”

”LEAKED VIDEO – THIS IS HOW ASSAD’S FORCES ENTER A NEIGHBORHOOD – THE GUNFIRE IS DEAFENING AND THEIR CHANTS ARE DISGUSTING. Damascus (Eastern Ghouta): They chant “Shabeeha (Thugs) Forever, For Your Eye’s Oh Assad!” which is a variation of the Pro – Revolution chant “Freedom Forever Despite You Oh Assad” (both slogans rhyme in Arabic.

Listen to the deafening sound of the the gunfire as these animals announce their arrival into the neighborhood, firing into thee air and at the surrounding buildings – spreading terror and fear.”

Syrian state TV in action – a case of literally shotgun journalism.

“LEAKED VIDEO – SYRIAN STATE TV REPORTER CONDUCTS AN ‘INTERVIEW’ THEN HAS ‘FUN; WITH ASSAD’S FORCES & FIRES GUNS WITH THEM. Homs (Baba Amr) – As he conducts a fake interview with a ‘local citizen’ who proclaims that he was happy to see the army come into Baba Amr (the district that was flattened by Assad’s forces over a one month period and where hundreds if not thousands were killed), this Syrian State TV reporter then puts on his coat and starts firing off a mercenaries gun for fun …”

“The Hitlers or Assads of this world cannot personally collect taxes, torture citizens, shoot into crowds of protesters, operate public transport or fix roads by themselves. They need obedience and co-operation to do so. And if enough people deny obedience and withhold their co-operation—even after credible threats—rulers simply cannot rule.”

Srdja Popovic, one of the leaders of the Serbian Revolution and member of Otpor

(Otpor=resistance was a civic youth movement that existed from 1998 until 2003 in Serbia, employing nonviolent struggle against the regime of Slobodan Milošević. They were credited for their role in the successful overthrow of Slobodan Milošević on 5 October 2000.)

And the protest go on. Here a whole village is out demonstrating.

“THE SPIRIT OF THE REVOLUTION WILL NEVER BE CRUSHED – AN AMAZING PROTEST. Daraa (Mia’rbah): May 4, 2012 – In a tiny village which measures no more than 2 blocks wide and 4 blocks across in Daraa, the whole village emerges to protest aginst Assad’s rule and for freedom and dignity.”

“DAMASCUS // The protest came out of nowhere, a holiday afternoon in central Damascus busy with shoppers interrupted by lofted banners demanding freedom and democracy.

With surprising calmness given the risk of dire consequences if they were caught by security forces, a dozen or so activists emerged from the crowd outside the historic Hamediyeh market.

Most were young, some teenagers. A majority were women, evidently secular, dressed casually in jeans and T-shirts. There were no chants or songs, no words, just the banners, most in Arabic, one in English, calling for freedom, calling for an end to regime killings, reminding the hundreds of onlookers that in Syria doctors can pay with their lives for helping wounded civilians.

The audience at first seemed to have little idea of what was happening: Damascus is full of banners and posters for candidates in forthcoming parliamentary elections.

But when reality began to sink in, they stood mute, eyes wide, watching.

A delivery boy on an old-fashioned bicycle stopped and stared, mouth agape. Drivers leaned out of their car windows or ducked their heads for a better view through the windscreen.

In a country that for decades has brooked no public dissent, scenes like this are hard to comprehend and, even after 13 months of an uprising that has thrown entire cities into an anti-regime revolt, somehow unimaginable and shocking.

The very heart of Damascus is still not used to such blatant shows of rebellion. On Fridays people expect protests and, as a result, many who prefer to turn a blind eye to the uprising simply stay at home, doors locked, windows shuttered, televisions tuned into the propaganda and soap operas on state-run channels

A midweek May Day protest seen by hundreds of ordinary people is a different matter, however. It is much harder to ignore, dismiss or defame, especially when it doesn’t fit with the government’s insistence that the opposition are Islamist terrorists waging a campaign of violent intolerance.

This protest was peaceful and well organised, carried out with a smooth confidence by young men and women who could be the sons or daughters of almost any modern, middle-class Damascene family.

From the pavement, a smattering of applause rose – perhaps from other activists among the shoppers. A few drivers honked their horns in frustration at the blocked traffic. But mainly there was silence. No one hurled abuse at the protesters. There were no spontaneous shouts of loyalty to the president, Bashar Al Assad.

As if time had slowed, the demonstration moved across the road, leaving the way free for the cars. It resumed on the central reservation, banners held aloft again.

Walking casually, some smiling, some serious, the protesters crossed a busy road junction. They stopped in front of the justice palace, which houses the courts where scores of political dissidents have been sentenced to long jail terms over the years. The banners were again thrust into the air.

One of the protesters, a man in his thirties with grey hair, smiled broadly as if enjoying a simple day out with friends. Another, face stern, held his fingers up in the universal signal for victory and peace.

Ten minutes after the protest started, there was still no visible response from the security forces. Traffic police made no move to intervene, carrying on with their endless labour of keeping the traffic moving.

Then a siren wailed. Soon afterwards, the protesters melted away, disappearing quickly in small groups down side streets, hidden by their ordinariness.

A minute or so later, the Shabbiheh, burly men in olive drab trousers and T-shirts emblazoned with Mr Al Assad’s face framed inside a heart, were running towards the justice palace.

They were too late to catch their quarry, arriving at the main entrance to Hamediyeh market with everything ostensibly back to normal.

But everything had already forever changed.”

More on the atrocities in the Idlib area. This time from Amnesty:

Inside Syria’s crackdown: ‘I found my boys burning in the street’ Amnesty International reports the harrowing testimonies of the people of Idlib and nearby villages terrorised by regime forces

“Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s senior crisis adviser, was in Syria for 10 days during the second half of April. Rovera has worked at Amnesty International for 20 years and has extensive experience of working in conflict zones, including Libya, South Sudan, Ivory Coast and Gaza. Here she reports some of the first-hand accounts of the brutal crackdown by the Syrian regime against its people.

”Soldiers came to our home and took my son. Later, as I was peering out of the window I saw soldiers line up eight young men standing facing the wall with their hands tied at the back and shoot them. Then they put the bodies in the back of a pick-up truck and left. I don’t know if the men were all dead or injured. At that point I did not know that one of the men was my son. His body was found with other bodies at a school not too far from our home.”

“In several villages and towns around Idlib the scars of the recent army incursions are very visible. Hundreds of houses have been burned down and everywhere I met families whose relatives were killed. Many were killed in exchanges of fire, in what seemed rather futile attempts by hopelessly outgunned armed opposition fighters to prevent scores of army tanks from entering the towns and villages. Others, both opposition fighters and people not involved in any fighting, were extra-judicially executed after they were arrested at their homes and those of their relatives.”

“In Taftanaz I met the families of two 80-year-old men who were killed in their homes during the army incursion into the town on 4 April. One was burned in his home. His wife told me: ”I had been staying with relatives across the street and my husband was at home. When I went back home I found it burned down but did not find my husband. I went out and asked the soldiers outside where they had taken him. I thought they had arrested him. A soldier replied ‘Go back in and look for him’. I went back andfound his remains in a pile of ash.”

“In addition to the human loss, families are having to cope with the loss of their homes and livelihood. Those whose homes and businesses have been burned down or destroyed and who have been left with nothing other than the clothes on their back are relying on the charity of relatives and friends. Some are trying to repair or salvage what they can from their wrecked properties but many are beyond repair. There is no doubt that the burning down of so many homes and businesses – and including medical facilities such as field hospitals and pharmacies – was deliberate, seemingly a combination of revenge and collective punishment.

The extra-judicial executions, the shooting and shelling of residential areas, and the deliberate destruction of homes, businesses and other properties in the Idlib area, are consistent with the pattern of violations inflicted by Syrian forces on the population in other parts of Syria where there have been opposition protests and/or armed opposition. Soldiers, members of the security forces, and the civilian leadership up and down the chain of command should know that such abuses constitute crimes against humanity and the claim that ”I was just carrying out orders” will not keep them from being brought to justice – either in Syria or in other countries around the world.”

Say Cheese the UN observers are here!

“Syria‘ Moving Scuds to Israel, Turkey Borders”

All this of course in full agreement with the UN/Annan peace plan. Especially that part that Syria will not hesitate to fire missiles at Israel and Turkey in order to ignite a large scale regional war.

Sounds like a real peace loving government doesn’t it? Fully intent of following ALL points in the peace plan and ceasefire.

The site says hundreds of high-caliber launchers are being moved, and that these could only be long range Scud missile launchers.

Syria has threatened in the past that in the event of foreign military intervention on its soil, it will not hesitate to fire missiles at Israel and Turkey in order to ignite a large scale regional war.

Turkish and French officials said ten days ago they were mulling a potential military intervention inSyria, where civil war has been raging for 14 months.

“In the face of developments in Syria, we are taking into consideration any kind of possibility in line with our national security and interests,” Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu told parliament during a briefing to lawmakers.”

“U.S. policy toward Syria is turning into a scandal on both strategic and humanitarian grounds. The next three months will be wasted in a toothless observer effort during which time the Syrian regime will go on massacring people and mopping up the rebellion. In addition, U.S. policymakers admit that they have no real back-up policy and what they should do next.

The Muslim Brotherhood has been gaining more power in large part because instead of financing and helping the moderate opposition, U.S. policy has combined being soft on the regime with helping the Islamists, especially in the absurd exercise in which an American initiative produced an anti-American, Brotherhood-dominated Syrian opposition leadership in exile.

And then to show how ridiculous the whole thing is, Syrian troops opened fire at oppositionists trying to talk to the UN monitors, forcing the observers to flee for their lives and injuring eight demonstrators. The UN responds by proposing a few dozen more, equally helpless, observers.

This is the same UN that in 2006 promised Israel that it would intercept Syrian weapons being smuggled to Hizballah in Lebanon and stop that radical group from reoccupying its pre-war positions in the south of the country.In six years, not a single weapon has been intercepted and not a single Hizballah terrorist stopped. On the contrary, withSyrian backing, Hizballah has terrorized the thousands of soldiers in the UN forces in Lebanon.

There should be no question as to what should be done. Along with Iran, North Korea, and Cuba, the Syrian regime is the most anti-American government in the world. It has done everything possible to sabotage U.S. interests, to sponsor terrorism, and to block peace. That regime is also Iran’s main ally.

Any conceivable president who cared about or understood U.S. interests would make the overthrow of the Syrian regime a top priority for the United States. I’m not talking about sending troops or going to war but about every conceivable other means. This should be blindingly obvious.

In addition, any competent president would work hard to help the moderate pro-democratic forces in the Syrian opposition so that they can gain power in the country. Instead, the Obama Administration that subcontracted dealing with the Syrian regime to the UN has subcontracted dealing with the Syrian opposition to the Islamist regime in Turkey. Not surprisingly, the Turkish regime has pushed Muslim Brothers and other Islamists and their clients into the ”official” leadership of the Syrian opposition, the Syrian National Council. This has led to a fracturing of opposition leadership.

And the Syrian regime is being rewarded with no more pressure and being given the ability to stall for time even though it has already violated the ceasefire. This is not merely a bad U.S. and Western policy; it is the worst possible policy, lacking any strategy to undermine the radicals and help the moderates.

After 2.5 years of the Obama Administration treating this enemy as a friend we have seen almost a year of dithering over the opportunity to get rid of that regime. It is like when the administration ignored the stealing of the election in Iran and the opposition movement there, as if it wanted to coddle, not confound, the Tehran regime. It also came to the rescue of the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip, pressingIsrael to minimize sanctions.

In contrast, the administration has not hesitated to overthrow an ally in Egypt and come close to doing that in Bahrain.

The pattern is that the radical side breaks every agreement, rejects compromise, and escalates aggression and the Obama Administration takes it all with a smile on its face and a song in its heart.

But back to Syria. Even the pro-Obama CNN network is amazed by U.S. policy. It admits the UN mission will fail, agrees that the Syrian government is the aggressor in shredding the ceasefire–using heavy weapons aimed at civilian targets, and adds:

“Monitoring missions can only work when the parties to a conflict have had enough of fighting or can be coerced into negotiation by outside powers. The Arab League mission members in Syria earlier this year were little more than bystanders, unable or unwilling to operate amid the government crackdown….The [Syrian] government has made it clear that the observers won’t have free rein.”

”The United States is leaving it in the hands of Kofi Annan, as is the rest of the world.…We’re the only path in town. There is no alternative.”

But why should the United States turn over its policy to the UN, especially since a number of members are pro-Syrian regime and blocking any serious action? And have we really reached a point in time when the UN can present itself as the only channel for international action?

In other words it is assumed that theUnited Statescan have no independent policy. CNN accepts that view, adding, “That in itself illustrates how few options there are for the West to influence events inSyria.”

That’s nonsense. There are many other options. But how can there be hope for any alternative when a U.S. official actually admits:

”Our allies were coming back to us and saying, ‘What’s your next move?,‘ and we were forced to admit we didn’t have one.'”

The U.S.economy is merely hopelessly in debt, but U.S. foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, is hopelessly bankrupt.”

“The authorities are touting Monday’s parliamentary election as a showcase of these reforms.

However, the opposition says it will change little in a rubberstamp assembly that has been chosen by the ruling Assad family, backed by the powerful secret police, for the past four decades.

The assembly currently does not have a single opposition member and official media said half the seats would be reserved to ”representatives of workers and peasants”, whose unions are controlled by Assad’s Baath Party.

”Nothing has changed. Syria‘s political system remains utterly corrupt and election results will be again determined in advance,” said opposition activist Bassam Ishaq, who unsuccessfully ran for parliament in 2003 and 2007.

”There are effectively very few seats for independents, and these will go to the highest bidder.”

A plea for help from long-time hum rights lawyer and judge Haitham Al Maleh:

“Syrians feel forgotten and betrayed by an international community whose support has been poor compared with that given Libyan rebels.

By Haitham Al Maleh

Syria yearns for freedom from the brutality of the Assad regime. For four decades, thousands upon thousands paid the price for their opposition to Bashar Assad and his father, Hafez Assad. We have been intimidated, arrested, tortured and killed. Since the uprising began in 2011, opposition forces put the death toll at more than 10,000, with many more imprisoned. And all because we want a free, fair Syria.

I am 81; I have dedicated my life to advancing democracy, constitutional principles and an independent judiciary in my country. I have been arrested on many occasions for having resisted the dynastic family rule of the Assads. I hope this awful period of Syria‘s history will end with the demise of this murderous regime, and I call on the international community to do more to bring that about.

I started my law practice in 1957, and in 1958 I became a judge. That lasted only until 1966, when the Baath Party, which had come to power in 1963, issued a special law that dismissed me. The excuse? I did not ”fit” with the revolution

It did not take them long to imprison me. Accused of ”spreading false news that could weaken the national morale,” I was sent to jail from 1980 to 1986 along with other activists by Hafez Assad, who had taken control of the government in 1970. During my time in jail I started a hunger strike that nearly ended my life.

When I was released, I returned to my work as a lawyer in private practice. But life was never easy; I was constantly monitored by the Mukhabarat, the military intelligence service, and its many branches.

In October 2009, I appeared on Barada TV — an opposition satellite channel — to speak out against government abuses, in particular the regime’s unjustified perpetual declaration of martial law and its suspension of the Syrian Constitution, actions that had enabled it to use unfair prosecution and imprisonment procedures since the 1960s.

Two days after my television appearance, Syrian authorities took me into custody, and on July 4, 2010, I was once again sentenced to prison for ”spreading false news that could weaken the national morale

When I was released this time, in 2011, the uprising had begun, and soon after, the regime’s violent crackdown.

The international community’s response has been poor at best. Syrians on the ground have felt forgotten and betrayed. A system that is supposed to protect civilians from brutal force has failed on a monumental scale.

We hear excuses for why intervention cannot happen in Syria as it did in Libya. The longer it takes, the more it looks as if the international community acted in Libya only because of oil, despite the much-trumpeted rationale of protecting civilians. Compared with Libya, many more Syrians are dying at the hands of their own government, and more still will perish as a result of international inaction.

One of steps that the international community could take to end the suffering and speed the demise of the Assad regime would be arming the Free Syrian Army. As it stands, the FSA can only fight what will be a losing battle. The government forces are heavily armed; the FSA has only small arms. If the international community does not want to arm the FSA, another option is to enforce no-fly and heavy-armor-free zones.

For now, however, the international community is putting its faith in the peace plan mediated by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. While I commend Annan’s work in trying to halt the slaughter of innocent civilians — and I hope it works — the violence continues. Even if a truce were to be honored, I cannot help but wonder what will happen when the people again take to the streets — as I know they will — to peacefully demand the downfall of the regime. My sources say that more than 1,000 civilians, including 34 children, have been killed by the Assad regime since the cease-fire.

Syria has been ruled ruthlessly by one party for nearly 50 years. Sooner or later the Assad regime will end.The international community must help the opposition by funding various opposition leaders to build political parties, so we can be ready to govern. It must help build democratic institutions and educate the population about political accountability, an alien concept to most Syrians, who have known only the anti-democratic Assad regime.

In short, we need all the help we can get to build a free, fair nation, one that represents all Syrians and respects human rights, the judiciary, international law and human life.

Syrian lawyer and former judge Haitham Maleh has been awarded many prizes for his human rights activism. He lives part time inEurope and part time in theMiddle East.”

Through Assad’s boots

How the naiveté and carelessness of western journalist put the lives of the opposition and civilian population at risk:

“Last fall, “Kardokh,” a 25-year-old dissident and computer expert in the Syrian capital of Damascus, met with British journalist and filmmaker Sean McAllister. (Kardokh is his online pseudonym, used at his request.) McAllister, who’s made award-winning films in conflict zones likeYemen and Iraq, explained that he was shooting a documentary for Britain’s Channel 4 about underground activists in Syria, and asked if Kardokh would help him.

At the time, the situation in Syria was deteriorating rapidly, as protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s repressive regime turned violent following a vicious crackdown by security forces. The Syrian government had drastically curtailed visits by foreign journalists, but McAllister had managed to get in undercover. Kardokh was grateful for a chance to tell his story. “Any journalist who was making the effort to show the world what was happening, that was a very important thing for us,” he told me in February.

At the time, Kardokh was providing computer expertise and secure communications to the resistance. He agreed to be interviewed about his work on camera by McAllister, who filmed his face, telling Kardokh that he would blur it out before publishing the footage. McAllister also asked Kardokh to put him in touch with other activists.

But some of McAllister’s practices made him uneasy, Kardokh said. He worried that the filmmaker didn’t realize how aggressive and pervasive the regime’s surveillance was. Kardokh and his fellow activists took elaborate measures with their digital security, encrypting their communications and using special software to hide their identities online. “I started to feel that Sean was careless,” Kardokh told me. He said he had urged McAllister to take more precautions in his communications and to encrypt his footage. “He was using his mobile and SMS, without any protections.”

Then, in October, McAllister was arrested by Syrian security agents. He wasn’t harmed, but was held for five days and said that he could hear the cries of prisoners being tortured in nearby rooms. Eventually, he was released and returned to the UK. “I didn’t realize exactly what they were risking until I went into that experience,” McAllister said in an interview on Channel 4 after his release.

The Syrians had interrogated McAllister about his activities, and seized his laptop, mobile phone, camera, and footage. All of McAllister’s research was now at the disposal of Syrian intelligence. When Kardokh heard that McAllister had been arrested, he didn’t hesitate—he turned off his mobile phone, packed his bag, and fledDamascus, staying with relatives in a nearby town before escaping to Lebanon. He said that other activists who had been in touch with McAllister fled the country as well, and several of those who didn’t were arrested. “I was happy that I hadn’t put him in contact with more people,” Kardokh said.

Rami Jarah, a Syrian activist based in Cairo, said that he tried to help another activist, known as Omar al-Baroudi, get out of the country after McAllister’s arrest. “He was terrified,” Jarrah said. “His face was in those videos. He said that his number was on Sean’s phone.” The next day, Baroudi disappeared, and Jarah said that he has not been heard from since.

Officials at Channel 4 say they took action to help McAllister’s sources after his arrest. “We have been in contact with everyone who felt at risk because they spoke to Sean,” said Amy Lawson, the channel’s head of communications. “He is an experienced filmmaker and took steps to protect his material.Syriais an extremely difficult environment to work in, so we continue to look for ways to minimize that risk whilst ensuring we tell this important story.”

It’s easy to argue that McAllister should have taken stronger precautions, but what, exactly? How many reporters are familiar enough with the technical aspects of digital security that they could protect their computers and phones from the Syrian intelligence service? The fact that McAllister, an experienced and committed journalist, jeopardized his sources with inadequate digital precautions is indicative of a broader problem in journalism today: We haven’t kept pace with technological advancements that have revolutionized both information-gathering and surveillance.

After researching the subject of digital security, I realized that there have been occasions in my own work as a freelancer covering the conflicts in Libyaand Afghanistanwhen I’ve exposed myself and my sources by carrying unencrypted data or e-mailing sensitive information over insecure channels. It’s unclear what, if anything, major news organizations are doing about it. When CJR’s Alysia Santo recently tried asking outlets like The New York Times, she got a firm “no comment.” Curious, I e-mailed an informal survey to journalist friends and colleagues, and several who’ve worked as senior correspondents in Afghanistan for major US news outlets said they’d had little-to-no formal training or assistance from their organizations in digital security.

“I think that the journalism community in the US, and to some degree elsewhere, is just beginning to grasp the fact that they need to protect their information and, by extension, their sources,” said Frank Smyth, who is the senior adviser for journalist security at the Committee to Protect Journalists and also runs a private company, Global Journalist Security. “It’s just too easy to get in and lift their information or monitor their communications without them ever knowing they were compromised.”

“He wished, though, that journalists would better inform themselves about the risks before visiting. “I think Western journalists can’t imagine the power of the regime here.”

Paul Conroy and the targeting and killing of journalists

Paul Conroy, a Sunday Times photographer was together with other journalist in the makeshift “press centre” in Baba Amr in Homs reporting on the slaughter going on.

That “press centre” was in reality, a four-story family home converted to this use as it was one of the few places that had a generator. It was also fortified. But its location was maintained by the rebels in tight secrecy.

Some of the journalists were using secure channels of communications protected by anti-jamming and anti-tracking devices.

But the Assad regime determined that they (the journalists) should be taught a lesson and deterred from ever coming back. And put a stop to this embarrassing reporting of the massacres inHoms.

So together with Russian satellite tracking and Iranian intelligence personal on the ground, on that Wednesday morning the building took a direct hit by a rocket and was totally erased.

The Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin and the French Figaro video-photographer Remi Ochik was killed. Three other Western journalists were injured. And Paul Conroy was badly wounded in the legs.

Also many people were killed when trying to get the wounded journalist out of Homs.

Now Kill the witnesses

Syrian activists killed in Paul Conroy rescue mission

Up to 13 activists died smuggling the Sunday Times photographer out of the country, it has emerged

“Paul Conroy, the Sunday Times photographer wounded in the leg in an attack in the besieged city of Homs, has been smuggled out of Syria in a dramatic and dangerous rescue in which up to 13 activists lost their lives, it has emerged.

Conroy survived the attack last week that killed his colleague Marie Colvin. Three other western journalists, including Edith Bouvier, who was badly injured in the same incident, were reported to be still trapped in Homs on Tuesday night. A claim by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, that Bouvier had also been evacuated was later retracted by his office.”

“Paul Conroy, the British Sunday Times photographer who was wounded in the besieged city of Homs, has been smuggled out of Syria toLebanon in a dramatic rescue.

According to those familiar with his escape a number of Syrian opposition activists died during the rescue effort after they came under artillery fire while leaving the city.

The evacuation party came under fire twice. Three activists were killed on the first occasion while more were reportedly killed when they came under fire again.

A spokesman for the paper said: ”The Sunday Times can confirm that the photographer Paul Conroy is safe and inLebanon. He is in good shape and good spirits.”

According to the Times, the sister paper of the Sunday Times, Conroy’s rescue took 26 hours from the moment he was carried out of his hiding place in Homs on a stretcher.”

”Despite the successful rescue of Conroy – whose colleague Marie Colvin was killed last week in Homs along with French photographer Rémi Ochlik during an attack on the makeshift media centre in the suburb of Baba Amr – three other journalists remain trapped in the city. They are Edith Bouvier of Le Figaro, who sustained a broken femur, French photographer William Daniels and the Middle East correspondent of El Mundo, Javier Espinosa.

The dramatic nature of Conroy’s evacuation underlines the high level of risk being faced by those who have been trying to run medical, food and other supplies into the besieged suburbs ofHomsand evacuate the injured, including foreign journalists.

The regime of President Bashar al-Assad, which has recently moved the elite 4th Division commanded by his brother Maher into the battle for Homs, has been using a foreign-supplied drone to target its artillery and mortar fire into the city.2”

Here is an interview with Paul Conroy on BBC’s Newsnight March 2 from the hospital were they had taken out Russian shrapnel

“It was a star-filled night in Chechnya’s besieged capital of Grozny. The snow crunched under my feet as I walked with the Chechen rebel commander away from the warmth of our safe house. When we entered a bombed-out neighborhood 15 minutes away, I put the battery in my Iridium satellite phone and waited for the glowing screen to signal that I had locked on to the satellites.

I made my call. It was short. Then the commander made a call; he quickly hung up and handed me back the phone. ”Enough,” he said, motioning for me to remove the battery.

As we walked briskly back to the safe house, it was exactly 10 minutes before the cascade of double wa-whumps announced the Grad rocket batteries pounding the vacant neighborhood we had just left.

It was December 1999, and the Russian assault on Grozny was unfolding in all its gruesome detail. After the dissolution of so much of the former Soviet empire, Chechnya was one country that the newly minted prime minister, Vladimir Putin, refused to let go of. His boss, Boris Yeltsin, and the Russian army had been defeated and then humiliated in the media by Chechen forces in the first war. Five years later, Russia was back. And Putin’s new strategy was unbending: silence, encircle, pulverize, and ”cleanse.”It was a combination of brutal tactics — a Stalinist purge of fighting-age males plus Orwellian propaganda that fed Russians a narrative wherein Chechen freedom fighters were transformed into Islamist mercenaries and terrorists. More than 200,000 civilians were to die in this war, the echoes of which continue to this day.

This time, journalists were specifically targeted to prevent sympathetic or embarrassing reports from escaping the killing zone. As such, you can’t find a lot of stories about the second Chechen war. One of the few and best accounts was written by Marie Colvin, who described her terrifying escape from Grozny for the Sunday Times. Last month, Colvin thought she could roll the dice and enter the besieged Syrian city of Homs to defy yet another brutal war of oppression. This time she lost.

It’s impossible to know whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — a longtime ally of Russia– studied the success of the last Chechen war before launching his own assault on the restive city of Homs. However, his Russian military advisors surely know the tactics well. The crackdown in Homs carries a grim echo of Grozny, both in its use of signals intelligence to track down and silence the regime’senemies and in its bloody determination to obliterate any opposition, including Western journalists.

Assad’s ability to lethally target journalists using satellite-phone uplinks could well have cost Colvin her life. Multiple reports have suggested that Syrian forces used phone signals to pinpoint her location and then launched a rocket barrage that resulted in her death on Feb. 22, along with that of French photographer Remi Ochlik and multiple Syrian civilians. “

“Russia has spent a long time perfecting these techniques. On April 21, 1996, Chechnya‘s breakaway president, Dzhokhar Dudayev, was speaking on a satellite phone with Russian envoy Konstantin Borovoi about setting peace talks with Yeltsin. During the phone call,he was killed by a signal-guided missile fired from a Russian jet fighter. The warplane had received Dudayev’s coordinates from a Russian ELINT (electronic intelligence) plane that had picked up and locked on to the signal emitted by the satellite phone. It was Russian deception and brutality at its finest.

It should have been clear even back then that there was a benefit and a distinct penalty to modern communications on the battlefield. “

“These past few weeks, under a barrage of mortar, tank, and artillery shells, their plaintive calls for help from inside the besieged Baba Amr neighborhood of Homssparked international outrage. But without Western journalists filing for newspapers and television outlets, these videos — mostly shaky, low-resolution footage of corpses and artillery strikes — wouldn’t have had the impact they deserve.

In a welcome resurgence of non-embedded journalism, brave reporters like Colvin and many others risked their lives to enter Homs and report from the ground. What they showed us was moving, horrific, and embarrassing. Once again, Western governments were caught doing nothing — while women, children, and innocents were murdered by their own government. It’s a playbook the Syrians are good at: The shelling of Homs began on Feb. 3, 2012 — exactly 30 years after the Hama massacre, in which Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, killed up to 15,000 civilians over three weeks in a similar program of wanton destruction.

What we haven’t seen as clearly is the extent to which the Syrian regime (thanks to its Russian advisors) now has the tools of electronic warfare to crush this popular uprising — and anything that happens to get in the way. Syria is one of Russia’s biggest clients for weapons, training, and intelligence. In return for such largesse, it has offered the Russian Navy use of Tartus, a new deep-water military port in the Mediterranean. Moscow sold Damascus nearly $1 billion worth of weapons in 2011, despite growing sanctions against the oppressive Assad regime. With these high-tech weapons comes the less visible Russian-supplied training on technologies, tactics, and strategies.

The sounds of rockets pulverizing civilians should have brought back memories and warnings to Colvin. She would have recognized all the signs from her previous reporting in Chechnya, where she and her escorts were hunted relentlessly by Russian domestic security agents who sought to arrest, silence, or kill any journalist attempting to report on the slaughter of civilians.

My time in Grozny included being surrounded three times by the Russian army, numerous direct bombardments, and frequent close calls. I paid attention to the safety warnings of the Chechen rebel commanders who kept me alive. These rebels were once part of the Soviet military and intelligence apparatus and were fully schooled in Russia‘s dirty tricks. They taught me much. Chief among them was not communicating electronically while in country, not trusting ”media guides,” and never telling people where I was going. If captured by Russian troops, they urged me — for my own safety — to say that I had been kidnapped by Chechen forces.

Just as I exited Chechnya, I met Colvin, who was heading in. She wanted to know as much as she could. I warned her of the duplicity and violent intent of the Russian military and their Chechen proxies. Despite my warnings, she bravely entered Chechnya and wrote riveting, award-winning stories that now sound almost identical to her coverage from Syria.

I was distressed to read of Colvin’s death in Syria, and even more distressed to think she might still be alive now if she had remembered some basic warnings.Her first error was that she stayed inside the rebel ”media center” — in reality, a four-story family home converted to this use as it was one of the few places that had a generator.

The second was communication.The Syrian army had shut down the cell-phone system and much of the power in Baba Amr— and when journalists sent up signals it made them a clear target.After CNN’s Arwa Damon broadcast live from the ”media center” for a week, the house was bombarded until the top floor collapsed. Colvin may have been trapped, but she chose to make multiple phone reports and even went live on CNN and other media channels, clearly mentioning that she was staying in the bombed building.

The third mistake was one of tone. She made her sympathies in the besieged city clearly known as she emotionally described the horrors and documented the crimes of the Syrian government.

Unsurprisingly, the next day at 9 a.m., a barrage of rockets was launched at the ”media center.” She was killed — along her cameraman, Remi Ochlik, and at least 80 Syrian civilians across the city — targeted with precision rocket barrages, bombs, and the full violence of the Syrian army.

In Grozny, Russian forces decided that they would eliminate everything, everybody, and every voice that stood up to the state — including journalists who tried to enter. Syria has clearly made the same determination in Homs. This military action is intended to be a massacre, a Stalinist-style lesson to those who dare defy the rulers of Syria.

The United Nations estimates that more than 7,500 Syrians have so far been killed in the yearlong spasm of violence there. Perhaps this ghastly toll would be even higher now if brave reporters like Colvin had not entered. With the recent news that the rebels have retreated from the bombardment of Baba Amr to safer territory, Assad’s forces, as well as their Russian advisors, are claiming victory. According to official news reports from the Syrian Information Ministry, ”the foreign-backed mercenaries and armed terrorist groups” have fled, the corpses of three Western journalists have been ”discovered,” and Homs is now ”peaceful.”

Despite what Damascus claims, this fight is not yet over. And we need more brave and bright journalists who will shine a light in places like Syria, where a regime works diligently to plunge its people into darkness. But let’s not forget whose callous playbook they’re using. “

By California-based Robert Young Pelton wrote The Hunter, the Hammer, and Heaven about his experiences inChechnya in 1999 to 2000. He is currently publisher of Somalia Report, a 24/7 news source that works with over 100 Somali reporters. His book The World’s Most Dangerous Places contains survival tips from what he has learned in over a dozen conflicts.”

by Paul Conroy on Facebook

The Butcher of Homs

“Last Tuesday I was asked to join a panel discussion at the House of Commons. I readily agreed as it was to screen Jonathan Miller’s fantastic and ground breaking film ‘Syria’s Torture Machine. One of the most insightful and inspiring pieces of filmmaking I have seen in many years.

The event was hosted by Anne Clywd MP with representatives from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, a Syrian torture victim, a representative from theRussian federationand me.

After an introductory round of speeches we watched Jonathan’s superb film and the panel then opened for answers. By this time I had moved back to the audience as my leg injuries were not ideal for sitting up front. Still wishing to take part in the panel discussion and perhaps do a little Q&A I asked if I could have a microphone. My colleague asked one of those media study, large red glasses and tight jeans assistant producer types if this was possible “It’s not going to happen” he was told in a rather bolshie and self-important way. “I think you will find he’s doing it anyway” my colleague Miles Amoore from the Sunday Time grinned.

The point in this is that all week I had been trying, unsuccessfully, to get a comment from the Russians regarding arms supplies to Syria. Now, right there in front of me, was a real life, in the flesh card carrying representative of theRussian federation and a Channel 4 work placement fruit bat wouldn’t give me a microphone.

I was reduced to putting up my hand and rather grumpily waiting my turn. In the event the wonderful Ann Clywd chairing the proceedings saw my rather desperate outstretched hand, similar to that of a child at school who finds he miraculously knows the answer to a question and is desperate not to go unnoticed.

Given that I had had a large piece of Russian shrapnel removed from me a few days previously I was eager to ask about the Russians continued supply of arms to Syria. I started by reminding him that it was a piece of a Russian made shell that had just been removed from my back. He looked suitably embarrassed but said nothing.

My main question I said was a three part yes or no question which he agreed to have a pop at

Q Is it true that Russia is supplying arms and heavy artillery munitions toSyria

A. Yes

Q. Are you are aware that these weapons and munitions are being used against civilians

A. Yes

Q. Knowing this will Russia stop selling weapons and heavy munitions to Syria

A. No (brief gasp from me and others) if we don’t do it somebody else will.

Now excuse me but that seems like an answer that a crack dealer would resort to when caught outside of a primary school with a huge bag of class A drugs he has been peddling to pre-teens, not the answer of a representative of one of the most powerful (and dangerous) nations on the planet.

So there we have it, direct from the horse’s mouth. Vladimir Putin ‘The Butcher of Homs’ as he so fondly known on the streets of Babr Amr is indeed supplying the Assad regime weapons, munitions and who know what else on the solid conviction that ‘If they don’t sell it someone else will’.

It’s little wonder we live on such a peaceful and harmonious planet.”

And more from Facebook

“Stop Assad’s Massacre #Syria

18/03/12Paul Conroy

Ok, thanks firstly to Bonnie for getting this page up and running.

In all my years as a war photographer I have never seen such systematic slaughter as I personally witnessed in the very small neighbourhood that is Babr Amr. Men, women and, most abhorrently, children have been massacred in their hundreds if not thousands.

Forget the phoney propaganda that is now a trademark of the Bashar- al-Assad regime. As an eye witness I can assure you that what is being reported is fact.There is no need to embellish or hype the slaughter that is taking place. It’s real, it’s happening now and it chills me to the bone.

I pay tribute to every man woman and child murdered by this regime. I salute the people who kept me alive whilst I was wounded in Syria. To the Free Syrian Army, The Farouk Brigade, Avaaz and to the all the Martyrswho died helping me escape. I can never repay you. I am forever in your debt.

Marie and Remi gave their lives to bring you the truth. Please don’t forget them; they were both devoted people who had a mission to bring you honest reporting, they gave their lives doing so. To the people of the media centre, who lost six cameramen in the line of duty and daily risked their lives to bring you what was happening whilst Bsahar-al -Assad tried in vain to crush the souls of the people of Syria. I salute you also.

In stark opposition to the likes of Remi and Marie there is a plethora of armchair pro regime activists who are vainly trying to back the regime. Please, these people have neither the tenacity, the courage nor sense of honour needed to go into Syria and report fact. My advice is to ignore them. Please let them have their say and fade into oblivion. They mean harm but mean nothing if ignored.

People who read this fight on. This regime can be broken, your spirit cannot. I will do all I can to fight for the cause. I have spoken to my Prime Minister, foreign secretary and other American politicians. I hope my words have an impact. In the dark hours that will follow please have the strength to continue. Too much blood has been spilt, to many lives destroyed for it all to be in vain.

I hope my leg gets better after the Russian missile blew a hole in it. Putin, the real ’Butcher of Homs’ abandoned you all in your hour of need. Never forget this.The Chinese stood by and watched you being murdered. Never forget this.When you regain control of your country do not forget those who stood by and allowed the massacres to continue

People of Syria we know you are not Al Quaeda, or terrorist groups. Have no fear we understand propaganda. I know the FSA well; they are not nor ever will be terrorists. We understand

To the People of America we know you can help, please, even though its election year and Obama has to win votes he must stand up as a man and disregard party politics. You have the power to stop men women and children dying. DO IT. Forget basketball, forget the opinion polls and start saving lives. NOW.

Vladimir Putin. You don’t seem as much of a man as the photographs make you out to be. We see you as a Judo black belt, tiger hunter and bare chested man of action. Is this just a myth? Why do you sit and supply weapons to a regime that slaughters its own people. Maybe you are just a Stalinist who never worried of such matters. To us all you appear ridiculous and week. I appeal to the ‘Butcher ofHoms’ help stop the slaughter. If not then your image will remain a vacuous myth

As I write the slaughter continues. Bombard your embassies, protest, scream and shout and demand answers!!! NOW. Every second of every minute is precious. Don’t waste a moment. We have been here before. Disregard Kofi Annan, he provides cover while Assad continues to kill. The time for talking is long gone. Now we must all demand action.

I would like to thank every person involved in my rescue. The Farouck Brigade. To Neil my dead brother who has given me strength, my parents. All at News International. Hm government. To Kate who kept my profile high. Max Kim and Otto, I love you. To Bonnie, thank you so much for all. Tom, the British Ambassador and his beautiful family. To Joss Stone who stands by me through the worst of times and through the best of times

To everyone I missed I’m sorry but pain kicking in now

Thank s

Paul Conroy”

And more

Opinion: World must not forget Syria’s missing activists By Paul Conroy, special to CNN

“Editor’s note: Paul Conroy is a British photographer and cameraman who has worked in troublespots around the world. While working inSyriaearlier this year forBritain’s Sunday Times newspaper, he was seriously wounded in the attack which killed his colleague Marie Colvin, and fellow photographer Remi Ochlik.

London(CNN) — The situation in Syriaposes a seemingly unending series of new challenges: Challenges that can either stun you into silence or propel you deeper into the steaming cauldron of propaganda, murder, misery and ultimately death that is now life in Syria.

Over the last few days the authorities have opened a new front in their mission to suppress the flow of information coming from Syria.

The house which I and other international journalists used as a base in Homs was destroyed in a rocket attack that killed my friends and colleagues Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik.

This building was the hub from which many local activists bravely transmitted the images that have kept an open window through which the world has viewed the onslaught of the Assad military against the men, women and children of Baba Amr. The house is now a pile of rubble, the activists dispersed.

Having removed the operational center of the citizen journalists, the regime is now engaged in a manhunt to track, capture and destroy the remnants of that network.

Tough talk from anti-Assad coalition The regime fear these people for good reason:They have provided the most compelling documentary evidence of crimes committed by the state.The sustained and systematic use of heavy artillery against an unarmed population isn’t a rumor or urban myth. It is well documented and, thanks to courage of the activists, we now posses a large body of video and eye witness evidence.

Crimes against humanity are a serious charge against any state. To know that such evidence exists and continues to be collected will doubtless be causing concern to some in Damascus. For all their apparent willingness to engage in the bombardment against a civilian population there must be those within the regime pragmatic enough to realize that such evidence can, and almost inevitably will, be used against them if the regime falls and justice prevails.

The case of Ali Othman highlights perfectly this ongoing fear of the state.

Ali Othman, a vegetable seller by trade, is now in the custody of the feared state security services. He was arrested on March 28, near the town of Aleppo, and — according to well placed sources — is now being tortured.

Despite international pleas for his release, there are reports that other activists have been receiving calls from Ali asking them to meet him, regardless of the fact that he is now in custody. Those who have responded to his calls and arrived at the meetings have been immediately arrested by state security. It is unlikely that Ali voluntarily made these calls.

Ali Othman never smuggled international journalists into Syria. He was one of the first citizen journalists to film the peaceful protests. His only crime was to record the abuses committed by his own government. The world should keep up the pressure on the Syrian government to pay heed to the calls for his release.

Another prominent figure who disappeared this week is Noura Aljizawi, one of the first activists of the revolution. Her work involved humanitarian aid, handing out medicines and medical help at field hospitals and to those with long-term illnesses who could no longer find the drugs they needed. She visited them at home and offered them help on where to find medical advice and assistance.

Noura left home last Wednesday, March 28, and has not been seen since.

Injured journalist tells of Syriahorror Her sister reports that six of her cameras and a laptop have disappeared and that since her disappearance seven other female and five male activists have also gone missing. I have received reports that she too has been making calls to other activists urging them to meet up — making calls from captivity that is. Hardly encouraging news for those concerned for her well being.

The fear among the activist network is that Noura, who was so well connected and involved, could well be the key that allows the regime to deal a decisive blow to those struggling to keep open that window onto the activities of the Syrian state.

Meanwhile, the Assad regime continues to have a free hand in the systematic and murderous destruction of those involved in the uprising.

The world response has been lamentable and few world leaders have dared raise their heads above the parapet. The UK’s foreign secretary showed good leadership when he issued a statement calling for the release of Ali Othman. We need more of the same from others in power.

While Assad and his inner sanctum believe they can act with impunity we will continue to see more stories similar to those of Ali and Noura. This regime continues to murder and crush opposition figures while hiding behind the six point plans of the likes of Kofi Annan.

Meanwhile the world continues to watch in horror as men, women and children die at the hands of a regime seemingly unaffected by world opinion.

I was asked the other day in an interview if I had crossed the line between being a journalist and being an activist. I answered, somewhat incorrectly, that I was a humanist. What I meant to say was that I was — that I am — a human being.”

From Facebook:

Stop Assad’s Massacre in Syria

Paul Conroy

“The situation in Syria continues to slip rapidly, and even more violently, out of control. The ceasefire, if it could ever be realistically be called that, now lays in tatters and the death toll continues to mount. The regime though has little to fear. The presence of a few unarmed observers on the ground is hardly likely to have Assad and company trembling in their boots and with no plan B on the table to actively put an end to the killing of civilians, we can be pretty sure they will sleep well in their beds tonight.

And what of the Annan plan if the ceasefire fails? Well, look at it for yourselves, apart from the non existent ceasefire,all of the points of the plan seem based on the people of Syria placing their trust in a government that has systematically, shelled, sniped and tortured a large portion of the population for over a year now. Doesn’t seem too likely, when all things are considered, that anyone is likely to lay down there arms and go home.

So what happens next? Mr Annan will continue to be ‘optimistic’ that his plan has a few teething problems but will ultimately succeed. Why? On what grounds does he go to bed thinking, ‘should be ok tomorrow?’ Well, I guess because it’s the only game in town right now. While Russia stills supplies the arms and munitions that are causing the mass casualties, Iran supplies advisors and specialist help and China continues to be China, the Annan plan is the only thing the west, and the Arab league, can point to and say ‘look, we are doing something.’ The only problem is it’s achieving little and the death toll steadily mounts.

Lives cannot be saved by goodwill and optimism alone. Time for the world to start thinking of safe havens, yes, I can hear people scream, that will involve troops on the ground. Troops on the ground, or more dead men women and children. It’s a big choice, but one I fear needs making. And making soon.”

Some we have come to the end of my 11 parts series on what’s going on in Syria.

As I said in part 1 of this series: There is so much to be said about the uprising in Syria and the extremely brutal suppression by the Assad regime. And as usual, most of it is not said in the mainstream media.

So I thought I give you some pieces that are to the point and that give you some perspective of this slaughter of civilians. In other words, some insight into the world of real politics. This is a different universe that the normal platitudes and declarations our political elites are so good at excelling at.

The focus is therefore going to be on some countries and international organisations and what they have done or not done in 11 posts.

So I hope I have given you some insight into this extremely brutal suppression of a popular uprising by the civilian population. And the world of real politics behind the declarations.

As I said, there is so much more to be said.

This Syrian uprising started little over a year ago with spontaneous demonstrations that demanded that the Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad reform Syriato a free and democratic state. Assad responded, as usual, with relentless force and a brutal crackdown. Which led to the people to call for the president to step down, and heed to his people’s will to relinquish his power. And for a peaceful transition to democracy.

All reasonably demands wouldn’t you say?

And from this start the Assad’s regimes force and a brutal crackdown have just intensified and widened. The death toll is now over 12 000. Mostly civilians: children, women, families, elderly etc. Many of them executed in the most barbaric way.

On top of that, the deliberate destruction of WHOLE blocks of cities, Block after Block, Neighbourhood after Neighbourhood.

I can add systematic rape to that mix of systematic violation of human rights.

Wouldn’t you say that this regime seems utterly barbaric and worthy of world condemnation?

And wouldn’t you have thought that the world would have done something by now?

And the sad answer to these questions is of course – YES ands as usual NO.

NOTHING have in realty been done except some cheap and empty rhetoric. A lot of grandstanding as usual with these people. And of course a lot of meetings, summits, conferences etc. Usually in very nice places very far from the reality they are supposed to talk about.

And yet Assad, hangs on, slaughtering his own people, destroying and despoiling whole neighbourhoods, calling the bluff of the Arab League, Turkey, UN, USA and EU/NATO.

Helped to a very large degree by the enormous material support, weapons, training, intelligence, troops, personal etc. from Russia, Iran, China and Hezbollah.

And by a traditional policy of dived and conquer the different ethnic and religious groups in Syria. And of course by terror and fear.

Nonetheless, this is a regime, with an enormous arsenal of heavy weapons, which in a year has not been able to dispatch a divided, badly organized, having hardly any weapons, and disparate opposition. It can be defeated and it will implode from the inside. The slaughter would end much faster if the people got some, any support, from abroad. And the fear is gone.

As for the do nothing as usual UN, it “proudly” upholds its tradition of doing ABSOLUTLY NOTHING when it really maters, like Rwanda, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Darfur, Bosnia (Srebrenica anyone?) etc.

Refusing to arm or help the opposition will not end the conflict or limit it; it will drag on as all the above examples shows. Leading to massacres and atrocities.

And by waiting the situation gets worse and much more complex, then “they” used its complexity as an excuse not to intervene while decrying the lost opportunity for intervention. And ALL this time the killing and atrocities committed by Assad’s regime just continues as nothing has happened.

On the contrary, the Assad regime has increased it’s attacks since Bashar al-Assad agreed to implement the “new” peace plan.

The international community’s response has been ludicrous. Syrians on the ground have felt forgotten and betrayed. A system that is supposed to protect civilians from brutal force has failed on a monumental scale.

And to ALL these countries, USA, EU, NATO, Turkey etc. that are supposed to defend and protect freedom, liberty and human rights.

To ALL these global government organisations (UN),and local ones like the Arab League etc.

To ALL the statesmen and politicians that talk so loudly about “responsibility to protect” (Samantha Power anyone?), freedom, liberty and human rights.

I say only one thing: You should BE REALLY PROUD of yourselves and the children of Syria will remember you. Each one.

The traveling UN circus is over for this time. This was the 17th show on the road so far.

Some highlights:

– ‘they are supposed to be saving the planet and they can’t even run a meeting…‘

– Everything here is a study, there is nothing tangible

– Awkward silence as Russian delegate asks what we just decided on

– He still doesn’t understand what’s going on w docs. No one else does either, but they want to go home

– decisions passed more due to exhaustion/lack of clear communication, not active consent

I have written extensible about the blatant hypocrisy from the UN pack and their jet set allies, this traveling circus that fly around the globe in first class, or private jet, stay in hotel rooms at $700-800 per night in spa resorts, and gets wined and dined at expensive restaurants.

All of this of course paid by us, the normal people.

While they at the same time preach austerity, frugality and sacrifice from us, the taxpayers.

This blatant hypocrisy is so mind numbing that it would be laughable if it weren’t for the fact that these people have the power to force us to obey them.

They are a truly parasitic class in the sense that Karl Marx wrote about it.

How ironic that today most of this class is leftists and so called “liberals”.

And here are the inner workings of this parasitic class, described live from people in the conference, via twitter feeds.

I think it sums it all up very well.

Any one that has been to any of these marathon meetings/conferences in the UN or EU, I have, instantly recognizes the very familiar settings and how “things” proceed.

President smashing out the decisions quicker than delegates can rush out the door to catch their flights

Here is Christopher Monckton going through the real agenda in Durban. In their own words.

And this is the real danger, in all these small prints and haggling over words and commas; the people driving this Global Warming Hysteria successfully advance their agenda one sentence and paragraph at a time.

Fully knowing that the delegates at these conferences, as it gets closer to the end of the meting, they just want to adopt “something” and go home so they can say publicly that they achieved anything (se above on the twitter feeds).

That’s when you can push trough your agenda when most people are just exhausted. Ant they know that most people, especially politicians, don’t read these very lengthy documents with all small print and all the paragraphs and sub paragraphs.

The politicians leave that to their “bureaucrats”. So the “bureaucrats” are very much in control of “the show”. And can push their own agenda.

The report is here:

Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action Under the Convention,November 29 2011

”DURBAN, South Africa— “No high hopes for Durban.” “Binding treaty unlikely.” “No deal this year.” Thus ran the headlines. The profiteering UN bureaucrats here think otherwise. Their plans to establish a world government paid for by the West on the pretext of dealing with the non-problem of “global warming” are now well in hand. As usual, the mainstream media have simply not reported what is in the draft text which the 194 states parties to the UN framework convention on climate change are being asked to approve.

Behind the scenes, throughout the year since Cancun, the now-permanent bureaucrats who have made highly-profitable careers out of what they lovingly call “the process” have been beavering away at what is now a 138-page document. Its catchy title is “Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action Under the Convention — Update of the amalgamation of draft texts in preparation of [one imagines they mean ‘for’] a comprehensive and balanced outcome to be presented to the Conference of the Parties for adoption at its seventeenth session: note by the Chair.” In plain English, these are the conclusions the bureaucracy wants.

The contents of this document, turgidly drafted with all the UN’s skill at what the former head of its documentation center used to call “transparent impenetrability”, are not just off the wall – they are lunatic.”

“Main points:

Ø A new International Climate Court will have the powerto compel Western nations to pay ever-larger sums to third-world countries in the name of making reparation for supposed “climate debt”.The Court will have no power over third-world countries. Here and throughout the draft, the West is the sole target. “The process” is now irredeemably anti-Western.

Ø “Rights of Mother Earth”: The draft, which seems to have been written by feeble-minded green activists and environmental extremists, talks of “The recognition and defence of the rights of Mother Earth to ensure harmony between humanity and nature”. Also, “there will be no commodification [whatever that may be: it is not in the dictionary and does not deserve to be] of the functions of nature, therefore no carbon market will be developed with that purpose”.

Ø “Right to survive”: The draft childishly asserts that “The rights of some Parties to survive are threatened by the adverse impacts of climate change, including sea level rise.” At 2 inches per century, according to eight years’ data from the Envisat satellite? Oh, come off it! The Jason 2 satellite, the new kid on the block, shows that sea-level has actually dropped over the past three years.

Ø War and the maintenance of defence forces and equipment are to cease – just like that – because they contribute to climate change. There are other reasons why war ought to cease, but the draft does not mention them.

Ø A new global temperature target will aim, Canute-like, to limit “global warming” to as little as 1 C° above pre-industrial levels. Since temperature is already 3 C° above those levels, what is in effect being proposed is a 2 C° cut in today’s temperatures. This would take us halfway back towards the last Ice Age, and would kill hundreds of millions. Colder is far more dangerous than warmer.

Ø The new CO2 emissions target, for Western countries only, will be a reduction of up to 50% in emissions over the next eight years and of “more than 100%” [these words actually appear in the text] by 2050. So, no motor cars, no coal-fired or gas-fired power stations, no aircraft, no trains. Back to the Stone Age, but without even the right to light a carbon-emitting fire in your caves. Windmills, solar panels and other “renewables” are the only alternatives suggested in the draft. There is no mention of the immediate and rapid expansion of nuclear power worldwide to prevent near-total economic destruction.

Ø The new CO2 concentration target could be as low as 300 ppmv CO2 equivalent (i.e., including all other greenhouse gases as well as CO2 itself). That is a cut of almost half compared with the 560 ppmv CO2 equivalent today. It implies just 210 ppmv of CO2 itself, with 90 ppmv CO2 equivalent from other greenhouse gases. But at 210 ppmv, plants and trees begin to die. CO2 is plant food. They need a lot more of it than 210 ppmv.

Ø The peak-greenhouse-gas target year – for the West only – will be this year. We will be obliged to cut our emissions from now on, regardless of the effect on our economies (and the lack of effect on the climate).

Ø The West will pay for everything, because of its “historical responsibility” for causing “global warming”. Third-world countries will not be obliged to pay anything. But it is the UN, not the third-world countries, that will get the money from the West, taking nearly all of it for itself as usual. There is no provision anywhere in the draft for the UN to publish accounts of how it has spent the $100 billion a year the draft demands that the West should stump up from now on.

The real lunacy comes in the small print – all of it in 8-point type, near-illegibly printed on grubby, recycled paper. Every fashionable leftist idiocy is catered for.”

First about Anthony Watts: He has my unreserved admiration for his long and unique work on surface stations in USA, revelling their poor locations, quality etc. This is exceptionally good work from a private citizen when the government and “scientific” organisations failed to do their work.

And then his dedicated work on his blog (http://wattsupwiththat.com/) to expose the flawed “science” behind the Global Warming Hysteria. All this work has made his blog, rightfully so, one of the must influential ones. This is extraordinary work from a private citizen. I stand in salute for that.

But, as I said, he has crossed a line that should not be crossed with the above post.

As a former journalist and working in the government, I am deeply troubled. I posted a comment to his post (see at the end of this post), but I like to explain in more detail why I am so troubled by his post.

What shines through is the absolute naiveté, especially the political naiveté. It’s incredulous. And dangerous.

So let’s first recapitulate which persons/groups are behind the greatest scientific/political scandal in modern time – The Global Warming Hysteria:

So called “scientists” (Big science), the political elites, governments, EU, UN, NGO: s (all goes under Big Government and Global Big Government), the mainstream media (Old Big Media), Big Companies (including ironically Big Oil). Many of them have been at it for nearly 30-40 years.

In sum the establishment.

They don’t care about the truth and give no quarters to anybody. Especially if people are perceived as a threat. These people and groups will never give up their power or privileges voluntarily, or because they are “nice”. And they will fight tooth and nail to keep it.

So it is this “charming lot” we are up against.

There are two parts to this.

First:

The first part is the extensive speculations, going through categories of persons that could have done it, and tips on who is behind the leak etc.

As I said in my comment to his post:

“Why on earth should you in any shape or form abet them in trying to catch the person/persons behind the leak?”

This is not your job, Anthony. The governments, with ALL their disposable resources; from police via tax authorities to different intelligence agencies and special ops; HAVE ALL the resources in the world to find this person/persons. If they so chose.

As a journalist, the first rule is to protect your sources. And especially you don’t try and go and expose them through lengthy examinations and discussion about who they can be.

To give you an analogue with one of the most famous of them all “Deep throat”. This exposed the Nixon administration, including the Watergate scandal.

Imagine if Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein had written lengthy articles about who the source could be, which persons actually had access to that kind of information, which department etc he or she could come from.

How many new sources do you think they would get? – None. Nada. Zilch. Zero. They would be the pariah of investigative journalism. And for a very good reason too.

Her you have a very reliable source with data that can be controlled and verified. And you want to find out who it is. Thereby risking that person/persons untold “unpleasantness”. Just by speculating.

And Anthony, why do you think FOIA after two years of silence published the WHOLE email file this time, even if you could only access 5000 of them? The rest covered by high encryption and a very long pass phrase?

Because this is his or her insurance against the resources the state can put against them.

Remember that FOIA was very naïve to in the beginning. He/she gave it first to the mainstream media (including laughingly enough BBC). Which of course refused to do anything.

It was only after that it was “leaked”. But however FOIA is, he/she have quickly learned the hard political lessons.

Very telling is the absent from the leaked emails of ANY regarding contacts between the so called “scientists” and politicians or person high up in various administrations/agencies etc.

Why, because I am quite sure that they are there among the rest of the 250 000 emails behind that encryption. So if the state or politicians gets “to close” FOIA will release the pass phrase which will reveal everything in the hidden emails.

That alone should give you pass for thought. And stop this helping to find the person/persons behind the leak.

Second:

So let’s again recapitulate which “charming lot” are behind the greatest scientific/political scandal in modern time:

So called “scientists” (Big science), the political elites, governments, EU, UN, NGO: s (all goes under Big Government and Global Big Government), the mainstream media (Old Big media), Big companies (including ironically Big Oil). Many of the have been at it for nearly 30-40 years.

In sum the establishment.

They don’t care about the truth and give no quarters to anybody. Especially if people are perceived as a threat. These people and groups will never give up their power or privileges voluntarily, or because they are “nice”. And they will fight tooth and nail to keep it.

So it is this “prime example of truthful and nice people” we are up against.

And what does Anthony do?

He writes an email to one of the chief architects behind the Global Warming Hysteria Phil Jones (CRU)and Journal of Geophysical Research;and kindly informs them that he has discovered some security holes.

And admonishes that they “should immediately change all passwords access for these CRU members and I would advise against allowing transmission of live links such as the one above in the future. JGR might also consider a more secure method of manuscript sharing for review.”

Let me se if I get this right:

Anthony writes to Phil Jones, a guy who literally hates him and has done everything possible to smear and stop him, and tells him about security problems on their systems. And how to stop them so there can be no leaks in the future?

HUUHHH??????

Leaks like Climate gate 1 and 2, which showed in black and white these “scientist”, politicians and “journalists” to be lying, breaking the law,“adjusting” and manipulating data to fit their agenda, stopping ANY dissent and suppressing any person or paper that dared to question them.

Out of respect for Anthony I will not make some very tempting analogies here.

You have accomplished what the Global Warming Hysterics in their wettest dream didn’t dare to dream.

How sad. And what a shame.

I can only conclude by saying that Anthony, you have crossed a line, and even if you do not understand it yourself, you have become Colonel Nicholson (se below).

Here is my comment to his post published 4.24 am today:

______________________________________

Anthony, have you lost it?

Why on earth should you in any shape or form abet them in trying to catch the person/persons behind the leak? As some have pointed out in their comments.

And Charles.U.Farleys comments are spot on

“In fact if the roles were reversed i think theyd have used any foothold, any loophole to ensure they brought you down rather than simply seek the truth. Personally i dont think its wise to assist them in any way shape or form as its simply helping them to continue unabated.

After all, this is a global war theyre involved in, a war based on lies and disinformation, of treachery and vilification of anyone not supporting “the cause”, and comfort shouldnt be given to enemies of freedom, especuially ones who stoop so low as these.”

Sadly, you very much remind me of commander, Colonel Nicholson played by Alec Guinness in the movie The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).

The prisoners (British soldiers) are working as little as possible and sabotaging whatever they can at the construction of a bridge.

When Nicholson and his officers are released, he conducts an inspection of the bridge and is shocked by what he finds. Against the protests of some of his officers, he orders Captain Reeves and Major Hughes to design and build a proper bridge, despite its military value to the Japanese, for the sake of his men’s morale. The Japanese engineers had chosen a poor site, so the original construction is abandoned and a new bridge is begun 400 yards downstream.

Nicholson drives his men, even volunteering to have them work harder to complete the bridge on time

The commandos who where parachute in, plant explosives to destroy the bridge and a train carrying Japanese soldiers and important dignitaries is scheduled to be the first to use the bridge the following morning

Making a final inspection, Nicholson spots the wire and brings it to Japanese commander attention. As the train is heard approaching, the two hurry down to the riverbank to investigate. Joyce, hiding with the detonator, breaks cover and stabs Saito to death; Nicholson yells for help, while attempting to stop Joyce from reaching the detonator. Joyce is killed by Japanese fire. Shears swims across the river, but is shot just before he reaches Nicholson.

Recognising the dying Shears, Nicholson exclaims, ”What have I done?”

I think it sums it up quiet well.

Sophia

__________________________________________________________

UPDATE

Well my post made some stir. As it should because it concerns some important principles.

First, let me say that I find it depressing that so few people really understands the need to protect the sources. And doesn’t understand that mindless speculations are very dangerous in this regard

Second, what shines through, still, in the debate is the absolute naiveté, especially the political naiveté. It’s incredulous. And very dangerous.

This is NOT some tea party where you discus things friendly over biscuits and cake. And have a wee argument.

This is about Power and Real Politics. And the persons behind the Global Warming Hysteria have been playing it for a long time. And very successfully so.

Until people understand this, that it always has been a political agenda, the Global Warming Hysterics will have the upper hand. It has nothing to do with science, facts or saving the environment or the Earth.

Here are some who publicly have commented and linked to my post about Anthony Watts:

Why on earth would be do that when the Climategate releases have been so helpful to skeptics? It appears to be out of some misguided sense of honour but I suspect that the real motive is that he is tired of being reviled by the climate establishment and is hungry for some praise from them: Deeply regrettable on many levels.

A Swedish blogger who herself finds great holes in the reporting of climate statistics is particilarly upset because she knows how unprincipled and dishonest the climate establishment is. She sees what Watts has done as akin to aiding and abetting criminals in their crime.

”Anthony wrights to Phil Jones, a guy who literarily hates him and has done everything possible to smear and stop him, and tells him about security problems on their systems. And how to stop them so there can be no leeks in the future?
HUUHHH??????”

“A schism in the ranks of global warming skeptics may ensue due to another gaffe by the world’s most popular science website, WattsUpWithThat. WUWT blogger, Anthony Watts has unashamedly boasted to have tipped off Climategate fraudster, Professor Phil Jones, about a potentially critical further security leak on university Internet servers.”

”You got that? It was his “duty,”says Watts, to help FOIA-denying fraudster Jones (the data-destroyer who unlawfully obstructed other researchers from trying to independently verify CRU climate calculations) to hide even more evidence. With such principled ‘friends’ like Watts does Steve McIntyre need any enemies?

Respected Aussie skeptic, Dr John Ray was so stunned by the Watts email that he penned ‘Controversial action by Anthony Watts’ (December 07, 2011) in response. Dr. Ray bemoans, “Watts has been assisting prominent Warmists to avoid any further releases of their emails. He is trying to disable any Climategate III.” Then Watts appeared to give the finger to Ray and fellow skeptics by declaring, “I opted on the side of doing what I felt was the right course of action. If that upsets a few people, so be it.”

Watts: Not the First Fool to Aid Professor Jones

When roundly condemned by more savvy commenters on his blog Watts responded on December 6, 2011 at 10:38 am:

“I was told in the reply from Phil Jones and from AGU that others had also been made aware of it, so I wasn’t the first.”

This Watts statement gives the game away: by declaring he was not aware that others had already tipped off Jones and in offering no further justification for his tactically inept action, he is merely conceding, “it wasn’t me who did it!”

As such the image of a snivelling schoolboy caught misbehaving springs to mind. Above all else, this ill-advised gaffe by Watts proves, if proof were needed, that Watts acted in haste and probably without consulting others. As such it shows once again that “Our Side” are a rag-tag bunch of renegades and not the “well-funded and well-organized” team that the narrative of Gore, Hansen, Mann, et al. would have the public believe.

I relate entirely to Dr. Ray and others who are now questioning why Watts would act to help the dastardly Phil Jones to block a potentially excellent source of information for skeptics. Ray speculates that Watts’s apoplexy appears to be triggered by some ”misguided sense of honor.” I can’t see any other logical reason so that may be true.

Ray suspects that an underlying motive is that Watts has become “tired of being reviled by the climate establishment and is hungry for some praise from them: Deeply regrettable on many levels.”

Wider International Frustrations Due to Watts

Ray’s frustrations are echoed by a Swedish blogger (read her comments HERE) similarly perplexed that Watts, a champion of exposing flaws in the ground level global thermometer readings, should want to sink to “aiding and abetting criminals in their crime.”

Watts just doesn’t seem to have the broader expertize to join the dots on this. In legal parlance, both the mens rea and actus reas were there for any jury to convict Jones of such crimes. Watts doesn’t comprehend that the original criminal charge against Jones under the FOIA was not pursued merely because of a tecnicality – the short six-month time limit had already expired. “

However, only the self-serving elite in the Crown Prosecution Service, police and UK Government refuse to see that Jones may still be prosecuted for his offenses as per the Fraud Act 2006 ( see Ch. 35. Fraud. ‘1 Fraud. 2 Fraud by false representation. 3 Fraud by failing to disclose information’) where no such time limit gets Jones off the hook.Watts, by being so amenable to Jones, is bolstering the edifice of climate criminality.

Watts just doesn’t get it – these authorities to which Jones is but a mere stooge – are not going to suddenly acquire the principles they manifestly lack and actually start playing by the rules. My own view is thatWattsacted hastily and foolishly to tip off fraudster Jones – such a gaffe gains us nothing and may cost us valuable new information. Scum like Jones do not deserve a helping hand because he and his governmental handlers can’t win a fair fight.”

“But why should Watts want to help scum like Jones? Professor Jones is a man patently caught out engaging in criminal misconduct expressing his intent in emails to colleagues and urging them to join him in unlawfully defying Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. “

“Breaking news: two years after the Climategate, a further batch of emails has been leaked onto the internet by a person – or persons – unknown. And as before, they show the ”scientists” at the heart of the Man-Made Global Warming industry in a most unflattering light. Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Ben Santer, Tom Wigley, Kevin Trenberth, Keith Briffa – all your favourite Climategate characters are here, once again caught red-handed in a series of emails exaggerating the extent of Anthropogenic Global Warming, while privately admitting to one another that the evidence is nowhere near as a strong as they’d like it to be.

In other words, what these emails confirm is that the great man-made global warming scare is not about science but about political activism. This, it seems, is what motivated the whistleblower ‘FOIA 2011’ (or ”thief”, as the usual suspects at RealClimate will no doubt prefer to tar him or her) to go public.”

“FOIA 2011 is right, of course. If you’re going to bomb the global economy back to the dark ages with environmental tax and regulation, if you’re going to favour costly, landscape-blighting, inefficient renewables over real, abundant, relatively cheap energy that works like shale gas and oil,if you’re going to cause food riots and starvation in the developing world by giving over farmland (and rainforests) to biofuel production, then at the very leastyou it owe to the world to base your policies on sound, transparent, evidence-based science rather than on the politicised, disingenuous junk churned out by the charlatans at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”

” Can’t see what the fuss is about, meself … just another 5,000 e-mails showing the climate science ”community” committing collective suicide – nothing a few ”independent” scientific inquiries and a BBC documentary can’t fix … hide the recline, so to speak.”

“The emails appear to be genuine, but this has yet to be confirmed by theUniversityofEast Anglia. One of the emailers, the climate scientist Prof Michael Mann, has confirmed that he believes they are his messages.”

Now the new emails are searchable in a database. It took less than a day through volunteer work by independent bloggers. That’s why the political elite, politicians, the mainstream media (old media) and so called scientists; in the end don’t have a change to hide the truth. And to continue to drive their political agenda and manipulations even if they have all the money in the world.

Which they have, it is we, the taxpayers that is forced to finance this giant scam. And it is we, the common people that have to pay two/three times for the “pleasure” of watching our politicians reducing our living standard back to the Stone Age.

They also have the backing of the big corporations, including ironically BIG Oil.

That’s why this fight for truth, real data and real science, and freedom is taking so long. They are not going to voluntarily give up all this power and money.

”Climategate 2.0 – the gift that goes on giving. And you know how good it is from the reaction of the trolls. They’re going mental. On the one hand they’d like to insist it’s a non-story. On the other hand, the more shrilly they shriek it’s a non-story the more evident it becomes just what a great story it is.

Here’s an amusing analysis of the warmist trolls’ various lines of defence, which I picked up from the comments at Watts Up With That: (I wd give a hat tip except I’ve gone and lost the bit: if anyone can re-find it for me let me know)

Stage 1: they aren’t real emails

Stage 2: they are real emails but they aren’t in context

Stage 3: they are in context, but that’s how scientists work

Stage 4: ok, this isn’t really science, but you guys stole the emails!

It sounds like a very boring technical detail, and it is, but it plays an important part in the official manipulation of the temperature record. Others have shown this before and done a very good job presenting it. But it is worth repeating because most people have no idea on what shaky grounds the temperature records are based.

I have written extensively on this blog about the tweaking, “adjustment” and manipulation of the historic and present temperature “record” which are presented in the official figures.

With the poor placement of stations (91 % of the stations are CRN 3 to 5 = bad to very poor); where they have purposely taken away the urban heat island effect, use huge smoothing radius, the historical “adjustment and tweaking” to cool the past etc.

Not to mention the great slaughter of GHCN stations around 1990 – roughly 63 % of all climate measuring stations were “dropped”. Oddly enough many of them in cold places – Hmmm? Now the number of GHCN stations are back at the same numbers as in 1890.

Also remember that the US stations are now nearly a third of the all GHCN world stations.

So what is a “smoothing radius”? And why is it so important?

A smoothing radius is: EVERYTHING within 1200 km in ALL directions from the weather station IS GIVEN THE SAME TEMPERATURE AS AT THE STATION!

Regardless of facts, geography and data.

Here is the official description: “Smoothing radius: Distance over which a station influences regional temperature.”

This is of course a VERY HANDY tool. First you drop most of the measuring stations. And the one you chose and keep are very strategically placed. Then you let the stations you ”kept” decide, or as they so nicely put it “influence” the temperature within a radius of 1200 km.

Now you can influence and “control” the official world temperature “record”.

And remember –This dropping of stations was done on purpose. And what “happened” to the temperature after that – the temperature went up sharply.

Hmnnn??

Can there be a connection???

To recapitulate:

In 3 years, from 1989 to 1992,5218 stations were purposely “dropped”.

From 1993 to 2000 1384 more stations were “dropped”. A total of 6602 stations.

And if we compare with 1970 with1992 8445 stations have been “dropped”.

If we compare 1970 with year 2000 9829 stations have been “dropped”.

And remember – Nearly ALL OF THESE STATIONS ARE STILL THERE AND GENERATING DATA.

This is the ”logic and science” behind the Global warming Hysteria.

So let’s look at the difference so you can understand why this “technicality” plays such a big role:

1200 km (745.7 miles) smoothing

250 km (155.3 miles) smoothing

Noticing any difference?

The difference is HUGE and VERY revealing.

See ALL these grey areas that “suddenly appears” in the 250 km one? These huge areas of the globe which are grey are the ones where they don’t have ANY DATA. (I.e. the data is there but they don’t use it since dropping of ALL these stations).

That is also why they always “officially” use the 1200 km smoothing in their graphics.

So that you wouldn’t know that Antarctica, Arctic, HUGE PARTS of Africa and Asia is NOT covered in “their measurements”.

Also notice, and this is VERY TYPICAL of them, that ALL these parts that ARE NOT COVERED ARE ALL VERY RED (i.e. very hot).

Do you think this is by coincidence?

And what does that says about the “science” behind this?

And also remember that a 250 km smoothing in it self is VERY large.

If you could use a 100 km smoothing you would see EVEN more parts of the world in grey – i.e. there is no data.

This is the ”logic and science” behind the Global warming Hysteria.

To show you how ABSURD a 1200 km (745.7 miles) smoothing is if used in ANY “scientific” way or shape or form, I am going to give you 3 examples.

Stockholm.

If the weather station is placed in Stockholm (Sweden) the temperature there would be given to Moscow, Amsterdam, Berlin, Warszawa, Kiev, Oslo, Helsinki and Prague etc.

You see how TOTALLY ABSURD THIS IS.

Paris.

If the weather station is placed in Paris (France) the temperature there would be given to London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Madrid, Rome, Dublin, Budapest and Prague etc.

You see how TOTALLY ABSURD THIS IS.

Denver.

If the weather station is placed in Denver(Colorado) the temperature there would be given to Las Vegas (NV), Phoenix (AR), over the border to Canada and Mexico, St Louis (IL), Minneapolis (MN) and Dallas (TX) etc.

You see how TOTALLY ABSURD THIS IS.

That’s why “officially” the high Bolivian Andes can have a “record warm” when the temperature is actually measured 1200 km away at the beaches in Peru. Or in the jungles of Brazil.

There has not been any thermometer data in GHCN since 1990 from Bolivia.

None. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. Empty Set.

So just how can it be so Hot Hot Hot! in Bolivia if there is NO data?

Easy. GIStemp “makes it up” from “nearby” thermometers up to 1200 km away.

“The official excuse given is that the data acceptance window closes on one day of the month and Bolivia does not report until after that date. Oh, and they never ever would want to go back and add date into the past after a close date. Yet they are happy to fiddle with, adjust, modify, and wholesale change and delete old data as they change their adjustment methods…”

The same goes on in the Arctic.

And the Antarctic.

And over huge parts of Africa.

And over huge parts of Asia.

And over huge parts of Latin America.

And over the oceans which make up 70% of the surface of earth.

So to sum up the “science” behind the “Global Temperature Record”:

It doesn’t cover 70% of the surface, Antarctic, Arctic, huge parts of Africa, huge parts of Asia and huge parts of Latin America.

Besides that everything is just fine.

Another brilliant example of the trustworthiness of the Global Warming Hysteria.

I have written extensively on this blog about thetweaking, “adjustment” and manipulation of the historic and present temperature “record” which are presented in the official figures.

With the poor placement of stations (91 % of the stations are CRN 3 to 5 = bad to very poor); where they have purposely taken away the urban heat island effect, use huge smoothing radius, the historical “adjustment and tweaking” tocool the past etc.

Not to mention the great slaughter of GHCN stations around 1990 – roughly 63 % of all climate measuring stations were “dropped”. Oddly enough many of them in cold places – Hmmm? Now the number of GHCN stations are back at the same numbers as in 1890.

Just one example of this historical “adjustment and tweaking” they are doing:

On average 20% of the historical record was modified 16 times 2006 to beginning of 2008. The largest single jump was 0.27 C. This occurred between the Oct 13, 2006 and Jan 15, 2007 records when Aug 2006 changed from an anomaly of +0.43C to +0.70C, a change of nearly 68%.

And what a “coincidence” that the data is always “modified” in only on direction – guess which one.

Also remember that the US stations are now nearly a third of the all GHCN world stations.

And as I said in the beginning – always remember that these figures are based on the official data that has been tweaked, “adjusted” and manipulated to fit there agenda (cool the past, ignore UHI and land use change factors, huge smoothing radius – 1200km etc.)..

Just a couple of weeks ago a new report was published by Patrick Frank that shows that there has NEVER been a measurement of Sensor measurement uncertainty in ALL the weather stations used for the “Global” temperature “record”. And that “the systematic error from uncontrolled variables has been invariably neglected”.

UNCERTAINTY IN THE GLOBAL AVERAGE SURFACE AIR TEMPERATURE INDEX: A REPRESENTATIVE LOWER LIMIT

“Sensor measurement uncertainty has never been fully considered in prior appraisals of global average surface air temperature. The estimated average ±0.2 C station error has been incorrectly assessed as random,and the systematic error from uncontrolled variables has been invariably neglected. The systematic errors in measurements from three ideally sited and maintained temperature sensors are calculated herein. Combined with the ±0.2 C average station error, a representative lower-limit uncertainty of ±0.46 C was found for any global annual surface air temperature anomaly. This ±0.46 C reveals that the global surface air temperature anomaly trend from 1880 through 2000 is statistically indistinguishable from 0 C, and represents a lower limit of calibration uncertainty for climate models and for any prospective physically justifiable proxy reconstruction of paleo-temperature. The rate and magnitude of 20th century warming are thus unknowable, and suggestions of an unprecedented trend in 20th century global air temperature are unsustainable.”

Future noise uncertainty in monthly means would greatly diminish if the siting of surface stations is improved and the sensor noise variances become known, monitored, and empirically verified as stationary.

The ±0.46 C lower limit of uncertainty shows that between 1880 and 2000, the trend in averaged global surface air temperature anomalies is statistically indistinguishable from 0 C at the 1σ level. One cannot, therefore, avoid the conclusion that it is presently impossible to quantify the warming trend in global climate since 1880.”

So I thought I show you the drastic dropping of weather stations in 1989-1992. Others have shown this before and done a very good job presenting it. But it is worth repeating because most people has no idea on what shaky grounds the temperature records are based.

And remember –This dropping of stations was done on purpose. And you can see on the graph what “happened” to the temperature after that. For some very “odd” reason it went up sharply.

Hmnnn??

Can there be a connection???

And remember – Nearly ALL OF THESE STATIONS ARE STILL THERE AND GENERATING DATA.

In 3 years, from 1989 to 1992,5218 stations were purposely “dropped”.

From 1993 to 2000 1384 more stations were “dropped”. A total of 6602 stations.

And if we compare with 1970 with1992 8445 stations have been “dropped”.

If we compare 1970 with year 2000 9829 stations have been “dropped”.

This is the ”logic and science” behind the Global warming Hysteria.

1970 (15 094 Stations)

1990 (9 475 Stations)

2000 (5 265 Stations)

Where did all the stations in China, India, Asia, Africa, Latin America, Middle East, Russia, Antarctica, and Australia go?????

AND WHY??????

Whole continents “just disappeared” and most of the landmass of Earth is now NOT COVERED.

And how do you compare the “average” Global temperature when they dropped 9829 stations between 1970 and 2000??????

9829 stations that where part of the “average” global temperature????

This is the “science” behind the Global warming Hysteria.

And it gets worse (which in itself s an “achievement”). Look at the map for 2010 – EVEN MORE landmass are “gone” on purpose.Including large parts of USA. See the huge contrast between 2000 an 2010 regarding USA.

How “they” (NASA) make Bolivia a VERY HOT PLACE EVEN WHEN THERE IS NO TEMPERATURE STATIONS OR DATA FROM THERE.

Another brilliant example of the trustworthiness of the Global Warming Hysteria.

And “their science”.

“One Small Problem. There has not been any thermometer data in GHCN since 1990.

None. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. Empty Set.

So just how can it be so Hot Hot Hot! in Bolivia if there is NO data?

Easy. GIStemp “makes it up” from “nearby” thermometers up to 1200 km away.

So what is within 1200 km of Bolivia? The beaches of Peru and the Amazon Jungle. Not exactly the same as snow capped peaks, but hey, you gotta make do with what you have, you know? (The official excuse given is that the data acceptance window closes on one day of the month and Bolivia does not report until after that date. Oh, and they never ever would want to go back and add date into the past after a close date. Yet they are happy to fiddle with, adjust, modify, and wholesale change and delete old data as they change their adjustment methods…)”

Here are some more glaring examples of this “tweaking and adjustment” of the temperature “record”:

“NASA/NOAA homogenization process has been shown to significantly alter the trends in many stations where the siting and rural nature suggest the data is reliable. In fact, adjustments account for virtually all the trend in the data. Unadjusted data for the best sites/rural shows cyclical multi-decadal variations but no net long term trend as former NASA scientist Dr. Ed Long showed here. He showed howeverthat after adjustment, the rural data trend was made consistent with the urban data set with an artificial warming introduced.“

Just look at this “tweaking” done by NASA/NOAA in August 2007 to the temperature “record”. They just “happened” to LOWER the temperature 1880-1900 by OVER 0.3 C and then they just “happened” to RISE the temperature 1990-2007 by OVER 0.2 C. So “suddenly” you have a nice “warming trend” where there were NONE before. In fact it was a lowering trend from year 2000 which “suddenly” change to a warming trend with OVER 0.4 C difference.

NASA and NOAA, which each receive close to half a billion dollars a year in taxpayer funding, have been systematically fiddling the worldwide temperature record for years, making “global warming” look worse than it is, according to a new paper by the Science and Public Policy Institute. The findings are reported by Joe D’Aleo, a leading meteorologist.

Robert Ferguson, President of SPPI, said: “Despite billions spent on official claims about the supposed threat of catastrophic man-made ‘global warming’, opinion polls show the public are no longer fooled. A main reason why the voters buy don’t climate alarmism any more is that the tiny but well-connected, lavishly-funded Climategate clique keeps on being caught out bending the scientific evidence.

The problem of data integrity has recently been commented on by MIT’s Dr. Richard Lindzen, “Inevitably in climate science, when data conflicts with models, a small coterie of scientists can be counted upon to modify the data…That the data should always need correcting to agree with models is totally implausible and indicative of a certain corruption within the climate science community.”

Mr. D’Aleo’s paper is a damning exposé of the inner workings of two agencies of the US Government –

• The global temperature data from surface stations is “seriously compromised: the data suffer significant contamination by urbanization and other local factors such as changes in land cover and land use”. Numerous peer review papers suggest contamination of 30%, 50% or more.

•The state of the temperature database, in the words of one of its operators, is “hopeless”, with “hundreds if not thousands of pairs of dummy and duplicate stations”.

•The NASA warming is achieved in part by inventing data in arctic areas where no stations exist.

•In the US, the warmest decade of the 20th century was the 1930s, and the warmest year was 1934, NASA’s chief climate scientist announced after the last super El Nino.

•NOAA tampered with temperature data in 2000, 2007 and 2009 to create an artificial increase of 0.3 F° in the warming trend since the 1930s.

•NASA admits even today on their website, there is no generally-accepted standard for surface air temperatures.

•Temperatures for the 1930s to 1950s have been readjusted downward to make the warming since then seem greater than it is.

•Temperatures for recent decades have been readjusted upward to make the warming of the 20th century seem greater than it is.

•Over time in the NASA database, the warming trend has been steadily increasing – not because the weather is getting warmer but because NASA keeps tampering with the data.

•The data tampering became more serious and more frequent in 2007, when a strong la Niña caused widespread and profound global cooling.

•Adjustments by NOAA and NASA, rather than real-world temperature changes, account for virtually all the apparent warming trend in the global data.

•NASA and NOAA have repeatedly resisted Freedom of Information Act requests for release of the unadjusted data and documentation of adjustments made, probably because they fear independent analysis will demonstrate the adjustments are unwarranted and warming insignificant

•Global temperature databases are “seriously flawed” and “can no longer be trusted to assess climate trends or rankings or validate model forecasts”.

In a lengthy paper updated in August 2010, Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception? , Watts and D’Aleo catalogued numerous case studies of temperature data tampering around the world. This issue is of critical importance because these very data sets are used as justification of advocacy for formulating and implementing unprecedented policy decisions seeking radical transformations of our society and institutions.

Said Ferguson, “So blatantly obvious has the tampering become that Congress must mandate a thorough investigation of the temperature records, independent of the government scientists controlling them. A ‘B’ team of non-government and non-UN experts must be established with access to all the raw data, records, adjustments, fudges, bodges and computer codes currently being black-boxed by government scientists.”

1. Instrumental temperature data for the pre-satellite era (1850-1980) have been so widely, systematically, and uni-directionally tampered with that it cannot be credibly asserted there has been any significant “global warming” in the 20th century.

3. All of the problems have skewed the data so as greatly to overstate observed warming both regionally and globally.

4. Global terrestrial temperature data are compromised because more than three-quarters of the 6,000 stations that once reported are no longer being used in data trend analyses.

5. There has been a significant increase in the number of missing months with 40% of the GHCN stations reporting at least one missing month. This requires infilling which adds to the uncertainty and possible error.

7. Numerous peer-reviewed papers in recent years have shown the overstatement of observed longer term warming is 30-50% from heat-island and land use change contamination.

8. An increase in the percentage of compromised stations with interpolation to vacant data grids may make the warming bias greater than 50% of 20th-century warming.

9. In the oceans, data are missing and uncertainties are substantial. Changes in data sets introduced a step warming in 2009.

10. Satellite temperature monitoring has provided an alternative to terrestrial stations in compiling the global lower-troposphere temperature record. Their findings are increasingly diverging from the station-based constructions in a manner consistent with evidence of a warm bias in the surface temperature record.

11. Additional adjustments are made to the data which result in an increasing apparent trend. In many cases, adjustments do this by cooling off the early record.

12. Changes have been made to alter the historical record to mask cyclical changes that could be readily explained by natural factors like multi-decadal ocean and solar changes.

13. Due to recently increasing frequency of eschewing rural stationsand favoring urban airports as the primary temperature data sources, global terrestrial temperature data bases are thus seriously flawedand can no longer be representative of both urban and rural environments. The resulting data is therefore problematic when used to assess climate trends or VALIDATE model forecasts.

14. An inclusive external assessment is essential of the surface temperature record of CRU, GISS and NCDC “chaired and paneled by mutually agreed to climate scientists who do not have a vested interest in the outcome of the evaluations.”

15. Reliance on the global data by both the UNIPCC and the US GCRP/CCSP should trigger a review of these documents assessing the base uncertainty of forecasts and policy language.

Did you see any headlines like this from the “Mainstream media” who otherwise are so eager to spread the Global Warming Hysteria?

NO – And this exactly the point. Because, despite this drastic lowering of temperature, life goes on as normal in Florida and Georgia.

And since this was a drastic lowering of the temperature, and does not fit their agenda, no big headlines except in some of the local media.

Isn’t it interesting that a PREDICTED (by their beloved computer models) rise of temperature of 1.5-2F in the next 100 years is considered a catastrophe for humankind and an eminent treat for our survival?.

By the way, these computer models are the same models THAT CAN NOT PREDICT THE WEATHER A WEEK FROM NOW, OR THE WEATHER A WEEK AGO.But they claim that they can predict the temperature a 100 years from now with 0.1F certainty!

As I have been saying all along, it has always been a political agenda – anti human, anti freedom, anti development and anti capitalism. And this Global Warming Hysteria is part of that agenda. It has nothing to do with science, facts or saving the environment or the Earth.

All of this, as always, paid by us, the common people, in the form of taxes, high energy costs and reducing our living standard back to the Stone Age.

And these guys spends billions and TRILLIONS of $ of our tax money to “fight” this predicted “Global Warming” and to “reduce” our “carbon footprint”. Ramming through their political agenda at all costs.

So lets look what happened in Florida and Georgia in December.

And remember, these are the official figures. With the poor placement of stations (91 % of the stations are CRN 3 to 5 = bad to very poor); where they have purposely taken away the urban heat island effect, use huge smoothing radius, the historical “adjustment and tweaking”tocool the past etc.

Florida:

This year, the December temperature is – 8.6 F coolerthan1931, the warmest December And if we compare this year’s December with 1971 it is– 6.7 F cooler. If we compare with1998 this year’s December is – 14.7 F cooler. And if we compare with 2007 it is -14 F cooler

This December is – 9.3F degrees cooler than the average for 1900-2010. And is the coolest December in 116 years.

That’s what I call RAPID WARMING and an eminent treat to humankind!

And somehow a DROP of -9.3F degrees in one month compared to the average is not considered a “big deal”. In fact it is ignored. But a “predicted rise of 1.5-2F over a 100 years is considered by the same Global Warming Hysterics to be a total catastrophe for humankind.

So to recapitulate: a DROP of average temperature of – 0.3F PER DAY is nothing, ignore it. But a “predicted” rise of average temperature of 0.02F PER YEARis a total catastrophe for humankind.

By the way, if you wondered, 0.02F per year is 0.00005F per day.

This is the ”logic and science” behind the Global warming Hysteria.

2010 temperature

This year Florida’s temperature is – 3.3 F cooler than1990, the warmest year. And if we compare this year with 1948 it is – 3 F cooler. If we compare with1911 this year is – 2.7 F cooler. And if we compare with 2007 it is – 2.3 F cooler

This year is – 1.33F degrees cooler than the average for 1900-2010. And is the 5th coolest year in 116 years.

That’s what I call RAPID WARMING and an eminent treat to humankind!

Georgia:

This year, the December temperature is – 17.3 F coolerthan1931, the warmest December And if we compare this year’s December with 1971 it is -16.5 F cooler. If we compare with1984 this year’s December is – 15.8 F cooler. And if we compare with 2007 it is -13.2 F cooler

This December is – 8.34F degrees cooler than the average for 1900-2010. And is the coolest December in 116 years.

That’s what I call RAPID WARMING and an eminent treat to humankind!

And somehow a DROP of -8.34F degrees in one month compared to the average is not considered a “big deal”. In fact it is ignored. But a “predicted rise of 1.5-2F over a 100 years is considered a total catastrophe for humankind.

So to recapitulate: a DROP of average temperature of – 0.27F PER DAY is nothing, ignore it. But a “predicted” rise of average temperature of 0.02F PER YEAR is a total catastrophe for humankind.

This is the ”logic and science” behind the Global warming Hysteria.

2010 temperature

This year Georgia’s temperature is – 3.4 F cooler than1921, the warmest year. And if we compare this year with 1998 it is – 2.8 F cooler. If we compare with1946 this year is – 2.7 F cooler. And if we compare with 2007 it is – 1.7 F cooler

This year is – 0.91F degrees cooler than the average for 1900-2010. And is the 22nd coolest year in 116 years.

Here are just a few examples around the world of the record cold and snow in November and beginning of December; that humans are responsibly fore according to the Global Warming Hysteria and “science”.

And last year it was the same story – “Global Warming” Record Cold and Snow. This “settled science” that is called Global Warming (Hysteria) works in mysterious ways I have to say.

“Almost all of the Austin area had freezing temperatures overnight into this morning and Austin-Bergstrom International Airport set a new record this morning when it reached 22 degrees there, according to Clay Anderson, a meteorologist with National Weather Service.

The old record for cold temperatures at ABIA on Nov. 27th was 28 degrees in 1975, Anderson said.”

“Once again, a new record-low temperature for this winter was recorded Friday evening in Lapland. According to the Finnish Meteorological Institute, the thermometer dipped to -34 degrees Celsius at Kevojärvi in the area of Utsjoki in the far north. “

“Stockholm is forecast to experience its coldest seasonal temperatures for over 100 years this week as winter weather takes hold of the country, according to the Swedish Meteorological Institute (SMHI).”

“Stockholm registered -11 degrees Celsius at the weekend, the coldest November temperature since 1965 and the mercury is set to plunge further on Wednesday and Thursday, dropping as low as -15.

”It is far below average temperatures, which usually oscillate around zero at this time of the year,” said Alexandra Ohlsson, a meteorologist with SMHI.”

“Forecasters say this winter could be the coldest Europe has seen in the last 1,000 years

So far, the results have been lower temperatures: for example, in Central Russia, they are a couple of degrees below the norm.

“Although the forecast for the next month is only 70 percent accurate, I find the cold winter scenario quite likely,” Vadim Zavodchenkov, a leading specialist at the Fobos weather center, told RT. “We will be able to judge with more certainty come November. As for last summer’s heat, the statistical models that meteorologists use to draw up long-term forecasts aren’t able to predict an anomaly like that.”

“People in most of Eastern Washington were told Monday to prepare for a rare blizzard as the first severe storm of the winter blasted through the state, though weather officials said it was too early to tell if the rough weather would affect Thanksgiving holiday travel later in the week.

Mike Fries at the weather service office in Spokane said it was the first blizzard warning the office had issued since it opened in the mid-1990s.”

“HEAVY snowfall across many parts of the UK has left farmers fearing another big freeze after last year’s weather cost millions in damage to farm buildings.

The UK’s earliest widespread snowfall since 1993, the weekend showers have seen roads closed across Scotland and the north of England, with some 15cms of snow falling in the Durham area.”

“The news will bring back memories of last winter when heavy snow across the UK saw a rise in stock losses, widespread building damage, milk collections unable to get on to dairy farms and livestock stranded as farmers struggled to cope.”

“Californians can expect a warmer but mostly wet weekend after a Thanksgiving cold snap broke or tied cold-temperature records — some more than a century old.

The mercury in Los Angeles dropped to 42, tying a 1946 record. Stockton saw a record low temperature of 27 degrees Thursday morning, while Sacramento tied a record low of 30.

The National Weather Service reports that San Francisco’s low of 42 degrees on Thursday tied a record set back in 1892. Across the bay in Oakland, 36-degree daytime temperatures shattered the old record of 42.

Bakersfield and Fresno both saw a record-lowest high temperature of 49.”

“Electricite de France SA’s power grid expects record demand today and tomorrow amid a cold snap that has increased the country’s reliance on imports.

Demand for electricity may reach 93,900 megawatts this evening and 94,200 megawatts tomorrow, Reseau de Transport d’Electricite, EDF’s wholly owned grid operator, said in a statement. France’s record for power demand is 93,100 megawatts set on Feb. 11, when temperatures were also colder than normal.”

“11 Degrees lower than normal temperatures: daytime temperatures in the capital on Wednesday was 16.7, the normal temperature is 11 degrees. Usually, the last days of November, mercury stays around 28 degrees.”

I have from day one written many, many posts in this blog about the intimidation of people and blatant censoring of facts done in the name of ”science” and Global Warming Hysteria. And that the Global Warming Hysteria has nothing to do with saving the Earth or the environment. It has always been a political agenda.

I have written extensible (over 120 of posts) about the scam called Cap and Trade, – the Biggest Heist in History- where BOTH BUYER AND SELLER BENEFITS FROM CHEATING. And we, as taxpayers and consumers pay the prize. It’s an open invitation to fraud and manipulation.

And recognize it for what it is – A GIANT FINANCIAL SCAMthat puts all the burden on the common people and does nothing whatsoever for the environment.

Therefore it is refreshing to se that more and more of the Global warming Hysterics are coming out from behind their masks and are openly admitting their political agenda.

The latest one is Ottmar Edenhofer, a German economist and co-chair of the IPCC Working Group III. He is also the deputy director and chief economist of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Professor of the Economics of Climate Change at the Berlin Institute of Technology. He will be co-chairing the Working Group “Mitigation of Climate Change”.

Here are some direct quotes from an article in Neue Zürcher Zeitung November 14:

“Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War….there is no getting around the fact that a large part of the fossil reserves must remain in the soil.”

“But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. That the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this, is obvious.

One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.”

“But then we need to see that a successful climate policy must specify a different global trade and financial policy.”

“And in developed countries, we have realized that for a climate protection target of two degrees neither purely technical solutions nor life style change will be sufficient. The people here in Europe, have the grotesque idea that shopping in the health food stores or in electric cars solved the problem. This is arrogant, because the ecological footprint of our lifestyle has increased in the last 30 years, despite the eco-movement.”

“There must be penalties and incentives: global CO 2-tariffs and technology transfer.”

“What we need to look for is an oasis that is the non-carbon global economy. It’s about the common departure for this oasis.”

These are the “representatives” that rammed through the Obama Care, the financial bill, etc., against the will of the people. They don’t care about the constitution, and they don’t know the difference between the declaration of Independence and the Constitution; and they don’t care that they don’t know.

Together with all the people in congress who voted for this bill. This is EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANTED AND INTENDED with this bill. But to get it through Congress they gladly and willfully lied through their teeth and ears, they even gladly put their lies in writing.

Why? Because they are ramming through their political agenda which they have been waiting and planning so long for to be able do.

I, and many, many others told you so before the Obama Care “reform” was rammed through at all costs against the will of the American people.

We where told by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it”

Well, we REALLY did find out a lot of things, and remember it’s just the beginning:

It’s going to ruin states, it’s going to be ENFORCED by IRS, close hospitals, fewer doctors, rationing (the new government agency, the Medicare Advisory Board, Section 3403 of the senate bill, that is going to decide (ration) what kind of Medicare you are going to receive), cuts in Medicare, increase the health care costs for companies by billions (and who do you think is going to pay for that?), etc. etc.

And then there were ALL these kickbacks, bribes and pork barrel spending in there to get the bill through at ALL COST.

And worst of all, the blatant hypocrisy from this new nomenklatura:

President Obama declared that the new health care law ”is going to be affecting every American family.” Except his own, of course.

The new health care law exempts the president from having to participate in it. Leadership and committee staffers in the House and Senate who wrote the bill are exempted as well.

Meanwhile, we STILL await Mr. Obama’s explanation why if his ”historic” health care law is so great for America, it’s not good enough for him and his family.

And remember – They DELIBERATELY PULLED THE TRIGGER ON THIS LOADED GUN knowing fully well “most” of the consequences.

“..the top actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid revealed that millions of American seniors will have to pay increased out-of-pocket health care costs next year for “less generous benefit packages” as a direct result of Obamacare.”

“Last month, a Kaiser Family Foundation report showed that family health care costs are up by 14 percent in 2010 – with even larger increases forecast for future years, again as a result of Obamacare.

“Health reform mandates new levels of coverage that will increase employers’ costs at least until 2014,” a Kaiser analyst noted.

Beyond higher costs, “Obamacare” is already reneging on government promises regarding prescription drug plans – another benefit that never should have been subsidized by taxpayers. According to a study released earlier this year by Avalare Heath, as many as 3.7 million seniors could be forced out of their prescription drug coverage under the new law next year – ostensibly so the government can provide them with “more meaningful choices.”

All across the country, Obamacare’s costly new mandates are driving Americans out of their existing coverage and forcing them to pay increased out-of-pocket expenses – perpetuating the worst inefficiencies of government-run health care.

“This much is clear: If the law with its expensive mandates remains on the books, millions of Americans are going to lose the health care plans they have now — plans the president repeatedly promised they could keep,” Jeff Jacoby of The Boston Globe wrote recently.”

“Eighty-four percent (84%) of voters who have health insurance rate their coverage as good or excellent. Only two percent (2%) describe it as poor. Among voters with health insurance, 60% favor repeal of the health care law.”

“As has been the case since the health care debate first began to heat up in September 2009, there is a large divide between the Political Class and Mainstream voters.Seventy-six percent (76%) of Mainstream voters favor repeal of the health care law, while 76% of the Political Class are opposed.

Seventy-nine percent (79%) of voters in the Political Class say the law will be good for the country. Seventy-four percent (74%) of Mainstream voters disagree.“

“Voters now rank health care secondon a list of 10 important issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports. The economy continues to be the most important issue on voters’ minds. “

Health Care: The more we know about ObamaCare, the more we find out it wasn’t designed to cut costs but to eventually eliminate private insurance coverage and create a government-run system.

Provisions of the Democrats’ health care overhaul started to become law only a month ago, yet the list of companies dropping medical benefits for their employers is piling up.

Mega-firms such as AT&T, Caterpillar, John Deere and Verizon are among those that are either considering ending coverage for their employees or have already chosen to do so.

It’s not just the big companies eliminating benefits, either. Smaller employers are doing the same. Larry M. Elkin, president of Palisades Hudson Financial Group, wrote Thursday in the Business Insider: ”For 15 years, I have taken pride in paying the full cost of health insurance for every full-time PalisadesHudson employee who wanted it. This month marks the last time I will do that.”

Elkin said that every one of his employees has the option of staying on the company plan. But those who choose that route ”will have to pay the entire cost — ranging from $574 to $683 per month — themselves, through payroll deductions.”

And where will those who don’t opt for staying on the company plan go? Maybe they end up leaning on the government along with the 46 million or so other uninsured Americans the Democrats are trying to cover.”

“As the debate over ObamaCare raged, Americans were assured by the president himself that those of us who like our insurance plans would be able to keep them. But workers will not only lose their employers’ plans due to their employers’ increasing costs under the law, they will also be losing coverage because carriers are dropping some of the policy options they offer.

WellPoint, Cigna, CoventryOne, Humana, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Aetna and Golden Rule have, for instance, announced that they will no longer sell child-only policies under the Democrats’ health care regime.”

In some cases — the Principal Group and its 840,000 customers is one example — carriers are dropping out of the health insurance market entirely.

Meanwhile, McDonald’s and 29 other companies told Washington that ObamaCare was going to force them to drop insurance coverage for some workers. Had those companies not been granted federal waivers from the requirement that they raise the minimum annual benefits of their low-cost health plans, roughly 1 million Americans would have been added to the rolls of the uninsured.

Don’t think it can’t get worse, because under the Democrats’ ill-thought-out plan, it will. Large pieces of ObamaCare that will make the system painfully expensive and increase federal intrusion still haven’t become law. The next Congress needs to get focused fast on stopping the march toward costly, substandard care.”

Congressional Budget Office director Doug Elmendorf on Obama Care: ObamaCare includes work disincentives likely to shrink the amount of labor used in the economy.

Factoring in additional demand for workers in health care and insurance, CBO estimates that “the legislation, on net, will reduce the amount of labor used in the economy by roughly half a percent,” he said. (For perspective, half a percent of current payrolls is 651,000 jobs, though the impact would show up in both fewer jobs and fewer hours worked.)

“Perhaps the most comprehensive critique can be found in ”Fresh Medicine,” a new book by Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat. In a year in which he isn’t even running for re-election, Mr. Bredesen pulls few punches. ”Congress and the Obama administration have just added over 30 million people into an obsolete and broken system and done little to address the underlying problems; in multiple ways, they’ve made them worse,” he wrote. ”Worse” is an understatement. Lower quality health care, higher costs, more complexity and more regulations would be Obamacare’s legacy.

The American people have a chance to stop it from happening. Just as the drubbing of congressional Democrats in 1994 in the wake of the Clinton gun ban has kept overt gun-control measures out of the national spotlight, the 2010 drubbing could kill the desire for health care nationalization once and for all. Already, 71 percent of voters in Missouri have approved a ballot measure that will block implementation of Obamacare at the state level. Big votes tomorrow on similar constitutional amendments in Arizona, Colorado and Oklahoma will make it clear once and for all that Obamacare is not long for this world.”

“We now know that federal employees across the nation owefully $1 billion in back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service.

As in, 1,000 times one million dollars.”

“Now, back taxes have been a problem for the Obama-Biden administration. You may recall early on that Tom Daschle was the president’s top pick to run the Health and Human Services Department. But it turned out the former Democratic senator, who was un-elected from South Dakota in 2004, owed something like $120,000 to the IRS for things from his subsequent benefactor that he just forgot to pay taxes on. You know how that is. $120G’s here or there. So he dropped out.

And then we learned this guy Timothy Geithner owed something like $42,000 in back taxes and penalties to the IRS, which is one of the agencies that he’d be in charge of as secretary of the Treasury.The fine fellow who’s supposed to know about handling everyone else’s money. In the end this was excused by Washington‘s bipartisan CYA culture as one of those inadvertent accidental oversights that somehow never seem to happen on the side of paying too much taxes.”

“But we do know that as of the end of 2009, 41 people inside Obama’s very own White House owe the government they’re allegedly running a total of $831,055 in back taxes. That would cover a lot of special chocolate desserts in the White House Mess.

In the House of Representatives, 421 people owe a total $6,524,892. In the Senate, 217 owe $2,774,836. In the IRS’ parent department, Treasury, 1,204 owe $7,670,814. At the Labor Department, where Secretary Hilda Solis’ husband had some back-tax problems before her confirmation, 463 owe $7,481,463. Eighty-one workers for the Federal Reserve System’s board of governors owe $1,076,733.

Over at the Justice Department, which is so busy enforcing other laws and suing Arizona, 1,971 employees still owe $14,350,152 in overdue taxes.

Then, we come to the Department of Homeland Security, which is run by Janet Napolitano, the former governor of Arizona who preferred to call terrorist acts ”man-caused disasters.” Homeland Security is keeping all of us safe by ensuring that a Dutch tourist is aboard every inbound international flight to thwart any would-be bomber with explosives in his underpants.

Within that department, there reside 4,856 people who owe the tax agency a whopping total of $37,012,174.”

Our latest interview with the White House Insider reveals a Democratic Party civil war, with growing opposition to the Obama White House.

“So who do you place the most blame for the Democratic Party’s troubles today? President Obama and his administration -without a doubt. The Obama White House has been a political train wreck from day one, and it isn’t getting any better at the moment. You already know my feelings on that.

Previously you stated that Obama could be re-elected in 2012, and that if he improved himself on the job – that if he took a more active and responsible role as President, that you would support him. Do you still feel that way? Is that what I said? (shakes head) Well…(pauses) Ok, I’ll just come out and say what is already underway, and to hell with the possible consequences to me. I will not support Barack Obama in 2012. That possibility has left the table for me. Based on what I know, what I have been told, what I have seen in recent weeks…no, I cannot support the President for a second term. My concern for the party , for the country…my conscience does not allow me that option any longer. Obama is not fit to be president. He simply does not possess the inclinations necessary to lead the country. And I don’t like saying that. I helped the man get elected. I was in the trenches day after day from city to city helping things get done in 2008…I take no pleasure in saying I was a part of that. And I take no pleasure in saying Obama should not be re-elected in 2012.

That is a very strong statement – anything recent that causes you to now say you will not support Obama in 2012? (Long pause – question is repeated) There is much I have been told, some I know, some more that will probably develop in the coming weeks and months. But you want specifics, right? I understand that…I’ll give you an example of why President Obama is not right for America. He sure as hell has not been right for the party. Not long ago, the president took a meeting. He’s late, which apparently is becoming more and more common with him. The meeting was almost cancelled. In strolls the president, joking with an aide. He plops down on a sofa, leans over and claps another guy on the back asking how he’s been. Apologizes for being late, says he was “held up”. He laughs some more. The meeting begins. After just ten minutes, during which time the president appears to almost totally withdraw into himself, an aide walks in and whispers something to the president, who then nods and quickly stands up, shakes a few hands and tells another aide to update him later on the rest of the meeting. As the president is walking out he is laughing at something yet again. He asked no questions of those at the meeting – not one. He left after just ten minutes, coming in laughing and leaving laughing. His behavior during that brief time he was there was described as “borderline manic”.

Ok, you have already stated previously that the president doesn’t show much interest in the day to day business of being president – why is this example so bad, or different? Care to know what that particular meeting was about on that day?

Certainly. Afghanistan. That meeting was an update on Afghanistan, and the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief, could give a -expletive-.

Were you actually there to witness this? No, I was long gone from the White House by then. It was told to me though by someone who was. They were there. First hand. They were also left to apologize to the ones left in the room after the president left. Some of these were military. They were not happy. No…that is not accurate. They were pissed. They didn’t say much at the time, but word got back. They were in shock at the president’s behavior. The country had just lost a number of soldiers the week prior, the public opinion on the war was falling…and the president didn’t seem to care. He arrives late, leaves early, appears to emotionally shut down during the actual discussion, and to then start laughing once again as he is leaving…how does someone reconcile with that kind of behavior? I can’t. It turns my stomach. I didn’t want to believe what I was being told, but I had seen similar kinds of behavior from the president myself, and I can’t dispute the credibility of the source. They have no reason to lie.

So is that one example the real tipping point for you in no longer being willing to support Obama in 2012? Or do you have any others you wish to share? Oh, I have others, though I cannot share all of them at this point because they involve some still in range of potential White House retribution. Then again, I suppose I am still in range of such retribution myself.

What do you mean by retribution? Punishment. Political punishment, and even personal punishment. The powers of a president extend far beyond the Oval Office – you know that. I make my living, and it has been a very good living, working within the system of politics. A president can create considerable…pressure if you will, to limit or even destroy my place in that system. Working with a president is an extraordinary and terrifying thing. In regards to my experience with Obama, it became far less extraordinary and far more terrifying. And it’s getting worse.

Terrifying? Yes, terrifying. To see one’s expectations so disappointed. To see a figure who wields such great power and influence fall so short of the responsibilities of that power and influence…that is terrifying to witness. Initially I developed great fear for my party – for the Democrats whose political careers were being destroyed by this administration and party leader ship. Now I sincerely fear for my country.

“While Republicans have been taking aim at Democrats voting record, including their backing a $787 billion stimulus that failed to produce the promised jobs and a $500 billion cut to Medicare for Seniors, Democrats have gotten mean with ad hominen attacks.”

”It’s a political game played by both sides of the aisle in every election, of course. But there are indications the midterm election of 2010 is emerging as one of the dirtiest races ever with most of the mud flying from Democratic ramparts.”

“The Democrats are wary of trying to brag about anything, given the bad mood and the recession,” said Eugene Kiely, an official with the FactCheck.org watchdog. ”So they have done relatively few positive ads.

“Increasingly desperate and fearful of a GOP takeover of Congress, the Democratic Party is secretly supporting fake tea party and other third-party candidates in the hopes of diverting votes from Republican contenders.”

“Seeking any advantage in their effort to retain control of Congress, Democrats are working behind the scenes in a number of tight races to bolster long-shot third-party candidates who have platforms at odds with the Democratic agenda but hold the promise of siphoning Republican votes.

The efforts are taking place across the country with varying degrees of stealth. And in many cases, they seem to hold as much risk as potential reward for Democrats, prompting accusations of hypocrisy and dirty tricks from Republicans and the third-party movements that are on the receiving end of the unlikely, and sometimes unwelcome, support.“

In Pennsylvania, the Democratic candidate for a suburban Philadelphia House seat, Bryan Lentz, admitted this week that his volunteers helped Jim Schneller — a prominent skeptic of President Obama’s citizenship — collect petitions to run against Mr. Lentz and his Republican opponent, Pat Meehan.

“It is one of the dirtiest moves,” said Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, a vice chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “It’s not as though the Democrats are playing to compete against the third party — they’re helping to build the third party up to make those votes not count.” Calling it “a concerted effort,” Mr. McCarthy added, “In Congressional races, it could steer the tide for the majority.”

“In other efforts, Democrats have tried to keep a lower profile, though they have not always succeeded.

“Democrats are desperate to stop the red tide spreading from the heart of the nation and heading toward the coasts. They are eager to preserve and protect their liberal agenda and extend it in the years to come. They fear that Republican ascendancy in the House might lead to the defunding of several elements of ObamaCare and thus put it on life support until they can deliver the coup de grace in 2012 under a veto-proof majority or a new president.

Democrats are reaching into their bag of tricks. They are going beyond garden-variety tactics such as push polls and misrepresenting their own records, positions, and even identities (including stripping their party designation, the Scarlet D, from ads; hiding the fact that they are incumbents; denying one’s paternity, as in the case of Harry Reid’s son, who went the way of Cher during his campaign and used just his first name, Rory; running away from Barack Obama and their own votes on ObamaCare and the stimulus; pledging to vote to repeal ObamaCare and extend tax cuts for one and all; misrepresenting the views of their opponents; and portraying themselves as Blue Dogs despite being Pelosi Lapdogs). And, of course, they are postponing ethics trials of prominent Democrats until after November 2. “

“Desperate times call for desperate measures, and we are beginning to see the Democrats start to rely on ”dirty tricks” to spoil the fun (because if you have to run from the policies that are destroying your party’s popularity, you have to resort to all means, fair and foul — and mostly foul — to win). Politics is war by another means, and when the Democrats are led by the CookCounty Gang that could not play straight, all sorts of tactics will emerge.

Let’s take a tour across the political landscape and catch some highlights:

The Department of Justice, The Secretary of State Project, Smear Campaigns, Death to the Tea Party, False Flags”

“False, misleading or fraudulent claims have long brought the wrath of juries, judges and government agencies down on perpetrators. So have substandard manufacturing practices.

Who could oppose following the rules, making quality products and being honest? But shouldn’t these values apply where far more is at stake than a few companies, pills, baseball records or bad role models? Shouldn’t we demand that these rules apply to people and actions that have unprecedented impact on lives, livelihoods, liberties and communities throughout the country?

Can we afford to continue having double standards that let government officials violate basic standards of honesty and accountability that they apply “vigorously” to citizens and companies?Why should legislators, regulators and investigators be exempt from rules they devise and impose on everyone else? Shouldn’t we teach our kids that government officials mustn’t lie to us, either?

“Military voters from the land of Lincoln could be shut out of the midterm election after the Justice Department reached an agreement with Illinois that gave the state ”a pass” for violating federal election law, an advocacy group warned Monday. “

“Eric Eversole, a former Justice voting section attorney who runs the nonprofit Military Voter Protection Project, told FoxNews.com the deal effectively lets wayward Illinois election officials off the hook and does little to ensure the state’s military voters get their ballots in time.

”For at least 29 counties, there were absolutely no consequences,” he said. ”Illinois is precisely the reason why you can’t wait until a week before the election to try and resolve a clear violation of military voting rights.”

“Washington, D.C. – Nearly six weeks after receiving a waiver of the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act, which allowed New York to mail absentee ballots to our troops no later than October 1, 2010, the New York State Board of Elections admitted on Tuesday that New York City and several counties failed to meet the deadline and still have not mailed their absentee ballots. [Read more: http://www.fvap.gov/resources/media/ny_delivery_cert.pdf%5D With only 25 days before the election, thousands of New York military voters now stand on the brink of having their voices silenced in the upcoming elections.”

The right to vote is one of the most fundamental rights of American democracy. It has been defended for well over 200 years by the sacrifices our men and women in uniform. Yet, when it comes to their right to vote—our military members’ right to choose the next Commander in Chief or their elected representatives—their voices have long been silenced by an electoral process that has failed them. That silence was most evident in the 2008 when thousands of absentee military ballots never received by the military voter or received after the election. The MVP Project is here to defend our military members’ right to vote and to provide them with the very right that they defend

Mayor Bloomberg Slams Board of Elections for Failure to Mail Military Ballots

“Bloomberg told Fox News. ”We send our young men and women overseas to fight and to die for us and we don’t care enough to make sure they get the right to exercise their franchise ? That’s what they’re over there fighting for as much as anything else.”

“Not only did Maryland fight like crazy to deprive soldiers of their constitutional right to vote for state candidates, they might appeal today’s victory for military voters against Maryland. I wonder if the Baltimore Sun will FOIA how much it is costing the taxpayers to litigate so as to avoid mailing ballots to military voters. But Maryland doesn’t seem to be a state that places high priority on military voters. They are more interested in registering 16 year olds to vote and where you can hunt ducks.More on Maryland’s unfortunate position. “

“Eric Holder’s DOJ isn’t interested in making sure our military members’ votes are protected and counted, so PJM is gathering evidence to ensure that problems are reported properly and will be fixed.

Pajamas Media is asking military voters who had problems getting their ballots to send their stories to story@pajamasmedia.com. Why? Because the MOVE Act may likely be rewritten next year, and information about problems you experienced will be essential to get it right in 2012.”

”Sixteen states and territories, at least, blew it and didn’t mail ballots on time. The Maine secretary of state, amazingly, told Fox News last week that compliance has been “pretty impressive.” I’d hate to see what he thinks is pretty “awful.”

”But the Eric Holder Justice Department deserves enormous blame. As far back as February, a manager at the Voting Section told state election officials that the new law was vague and the DOJ didn’t really want to sue anyone. State election officials were flabbergasted and acted accordingly. They assumed compliance with the new law wasn’t a big deal to the DOJ, the agency charged with enforcement.

Then things really got bad. In the spring, the DOJ never provided the Pentagon waiver guidance despite the Pentagon’s repeated requests. And how many lawsuits did the DOJ file despite the multiple states that were facially out of compliance with too-late primary elections? Zero. The summer dribbled away with analysis, talk, and chatter instead of action.”

“In 2008, some 17,000 servicemen and servicewomen mailed home completed ballots that were never counted. The DOJ barely lifted a finger to prevent or prosecute this travesty. What will happen in 2010?”

”Election ’10: The president’s home state gets a pass from the Justice Department on ensuring its soldiers overseas can vote. An administration obsessed with gays in the military doesn’t care about voting rights for GIs.

You can call it a tragedy of errors, a perfect storm of incompetent and uncaring bureaucrats, or you can call it a deliberate attempt to steal what looks to be a close race for both governor and U.S. senator in President Obama’s home state by disenfranchising its servicemen overseas, votes likely to tilt Republican.”

“Meanwhile, the Chicago Board of Elections hand-delivers ballots to inmates in CookCounty Jail. The board doesn’t even wait for the inmates to apply — it brings the applications with the ballots! More than 2,600 inmates have cast ballots — strikingly similar to the 2,600 soldiers who will likely not receive a ballot for Tuesday’s election.”

“Obama Justice Department outrages never cease. The politically charged gang led by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is more interested in helping felons vote than in helping the military to vote. Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, has put a legislative hold on the already troubled nomination of James M. Cole to be deputy attorney general until the attorney general ensures full protection for voting rights of our military (and associated civilian personnel) stationed abroad. The senator is right to raise a ruckus.

Mr. Cornyn co-authored a 2009 law mandating that states mail absentee ballots to military voters at least 45 days before the election. Yet, as former Justice Department lawyer Eric Eversole first reported in The Washington Times last week, the department seems to be encouraging states to apply for waivers so they won’t have to follow that law. More than 17,000 Americans serving overseas were denied the vote in 2008 – but, presumably because military personnel are thought to lean conservative, the liberal Obama administration is in no hurry to correct the situation.

The Justice Department is so unenthusiastic about military voting that its website still lists the old requirement for a shorter 30-day military voting window, rather than the current law mandating 45 days. On the other hand, the Justice Department has no legislative mandate whatsoever to involve itself with helping felons to vote, but its website devotes a large section – 2,314 words – to advising felons how to regain voting privileges.”

“We’re looking for citizen journalists/poll watchers from across the country to help us report on cases of voter fraud, intimidation or other voting misconduct. Sign up using the form below to get involved.” Sign up here: http://pajamasmedia.com/voter-fraud-watch-2/

“Election watchers True the Vote have found disturbing amounts of fraud in Harris County, Texas. Rather than support their important work, the Texas Democratic Party (among others) is suing them. “

“Talk about denial! A group of liberal activists is making the media rounds, assuring reporters and editors that election fraud is a fairy tale. Nothing serious, they assert, nothing to see here. Too bad for them that citizens in Houston, energized by the Tea Party movement, have formed a group called True the Vote. Their hard work has demonstrated that, in some parts of the country at least, our election system is still infested with problems.”

“True the Vote reports that at least four noncitizens have been registered to vote in Harris County. The group provided Justice with the actual voter registration forms where applicants marked “NO” to the question: “Are you a U.S. Citizen?” The group also provided the voter registration numbers of these confessed noncitizens. Yes, astonishingly, HarrisCounty registered them to vote anyway. They are now on the rolls and able to participate in the upcoming midterm elections.

The Help America Vote Act of 2002 was supposed to stop this from happening. But this federal legislation is only as good as the Justice Department’s willingness to enforce it. If Harris County is registering noncitizens, then it is violating numerous provisions of federal law, including those that prohibit the registration of foreigners to vote in federal elections.

True the Vote uncovered other types of fraud as well. The group forwarded to DOJ seven voter registration forms with applicant names different from the signature name. For example: Ta’mackayn Harrison’s application was signed by “Bra Kelly.” Jason King’s was signed by “Jemma Noel.” Yet HarrisCounty inexplicably approved all of these applications. Jason King, aka Jemma Noel, is now on the voter rolls in Houston.

The citizens group also found multiple registrations for individual voters. For example, True the Vote provided the Justice Department government documents showing that at least four persons, including Jose Gomez and Victor Nickerson, had registered to vote multiple times successfully.

These problems were found by True the Vote in just a small sampling of the county’s voter registration list. How many other, similar problems would turn up in a comprehensive review? Don’t forget: every vote counts. Which also means that every legitimate vote cancelled out by a fraudulent vote should be a concern to anyone interested in fair elections and protecting the right to vote.”

“Here is a perfect example of political cynicism from the gangster Congressman in Arizona’s 7th District.

Just hours after the Yuma Sun reports that 3000 voter registrations had been dumped at the Yuma County Recorder’s Office by a group affiliated with the SEIU (with most of them subsequently found to be fraudulent), Raul Grijalva’s office received a suspicious package covered in swastikas with a white powder inside.

Now the story about the suspicious package — the “terrorist attack” as Grijalva puts it — has gone national, and the voter fraud story has gone unnoticed by the mainstream media. How convenient, right?

Raul Grijalva part-time staffer Emily Romero has repeatedly bragged to Democratic insiders that the campaign concocts these threats to take attention away from bad publicity. In this case, the campaign decided to fake a “terrorist attack” on themselves to cover up the story of voter fraud that had just broken. “

Watch this video of a poll watcher’s story about what she has seen during early voting in Houston, Texas. This is eyewitness testimony to voter fraud in the form of poll worker casting votes on behalf of voters,

“Tea Party groups in New Jersey are outraged over ads that have mysteriously surfaced in support of a supposed Tea Party candidate. The sponsored ads on Google are being served up all over the web, in places like BlogTalkRadio, in support of one Peter DeStefano, and direct viewers to the website of njteapartycoalition.org.

It’s one thing to use dirty Democratic tricks to get on the ballot in an effort to siphon votes away from the Republican candidate, former NFL football player Jon Runyan. But it’s another to fraudulently represent yourself as another existing Tea Party organization in online advertising campaigns, even using that group’s URL to make it seem as though that group has endorsed your fake candidate.

So, the latest question still remains. Who is fraudulently using the NJ Tea Party Coalition’s website address in Google advertisements?”

The same SEIU offshoot group that is accused of turning in thousands of bogus voter registrations in Arizona has come under fire in Colorado.Mi Familia Vota is accused of turning in 6,000 bogus voter registrations in Colorado.”

Rule Of Law: Suspicious voting-machine malfunctions and cheating candidates are the stuff of banana republics, not America. With Democrats about to suffer historic losses, is our election’s integrity in question?

‘It can’t happen here,” most Americans would say about the chances of voting one way and seeing your votes recorded the opposite. But that’s what happened in early voting in North Carolina’s unfortunately named Craven County last week.

Voter Sam Laughinghouse of New Bern found that ”an electronic voting machine completed his straight-party ticket for the opposite of what he intended,” the New Bern Sun Journal reported.

Laughinghouse ”pushed the button to vote Republican in all races, but the voting machine screen displayed a ballot with all Democrats checked,” the local paper reported. ”He cleared the screen and tried again with the same result.”

Election personnel eventually straightened it out, but clearly a less observant Republican voter would have inadvertently voted for every Democrat on his ballot. Chuck Tyson, chairman of the Craven County Republican Party, told the Sun Journal he ”got two or three calls” from voters experiencing the same problem and is not satisfied with state election officials’ efforts to fix it.

In Boulder City, Nev., meanwhile, where voters use computer screens, another disturbing episode was reported by Fox News. When voter Joyce Ferrara and her husband went to vote for Republican Sharron Angle, they — and several others, according to Ferrara — found that Democratic incumbent Harry Reid’s name was already checked. The county registrar’s explanation: The high-tech voting screens are sensitive.

The Nevada case is especially disturbing because the seat of the most powerful Democrat in the Senate is at stake.”

“Power is hard to give up, but when those in power compromise campaign and election rules, we cross a sacrosanct threshold.”

The union SEIU controls voting machines in Clark County, NV and the ballots are pre-marked for Harry Reid. What a coincidence wouldn’t you say? Especially since SEIU are spending $44 million of their member’s fees (and the members have no say in this) on helping democrats. How reassuring that the same people are in charge of the voting machines.

They have also spent $225,000.00 of their member’s fees to fight Sharron Angle (R).

“According to Joyce Ferrara who was an eyewitness to this strange ballot ordeal, the problem was widespread, “One person that’s a fluke. Two, that’s strange. But several within a five minute period of time — that’s wrong.”

It is particularly troubling that Clark County has put the uber left-wing SEIU Local 1107 in charge of their voting machines.”

Notice, this video was first published on January 3 2010 long before the Obama Care bill was passed

America Rising: An Open Letter to Democrat Politicians

”America elected you on a promise of hope and change. We trusted you. So we elected you. We regret it. So in 2010…. You Will Lose Big. No more taxes. No more spending. No more socialism. We tried to warn you. But you wouldn’t listen. So now you will pay.We’re taking our country back. From radical leftists and liberals. We’re coming after you.

Blue collar democrats, libertarians, independents, and conservatives. We love our country. We are proud of our founders. And we will fight for our traditions. We don’t want your revolution! “

America Rising Part 2- A Call for the Republican Party to Join!

This is your last chance, Republican Party, to prove to the American voter that you are serious and mean what you say. No more co-opting freshmen to model them to stooges. (read John Trent (R) in WP July 18: “As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them”)

Frank Caprio (D) Gubernatorial candidate for Rhode Island:

“I never asked for President Obama’s endorsement. You know, he can take his endorsement and shove it as far as I’m concerned. The reality here is that Rhode Islanders are hurting. We have one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. We had one of the worst floods in the history of the United States a few months back. And President Obama didn’t even do a flyover of Rhode Island like President Bush did when New Orleans had their problems. He ignored us, and now he is coming into Rhode Island and treating us like an ATM machine.”

“Another laugh at Mr. Obama’s expense came when he was responding to a line of questioning from Mr. Stewart that encapsulated the liberal critique of his presidency; namely, that he hasn’t done enough to bring about the promised ”fundamental transformation” of America. For the left, there is a widening audacity gap. Would Mr. Obama have to change his slogan, ”Yes, we can?”the president began. ”I think what I would say is ‘yes, we can, but … .’ ” At that point, Mr. Stewart and the crowd began laughing. The president dude looked a little foolish. Hope and change died with that ”but.”

“The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is now the biggest outside spender of the 2010 elections, thanks to an 11th-hour effort to boost Democrats that has vaulted the public-sector union ahead of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO and a flock of new Republican groups in campaign spending.

The 1.6 million-member AFSCMEis spending a total of $87.5 million on the elections after tapping into a $16 million emergency account to help fortify the Democrats’ hold on Congress. Last week, AFSCME dug deeper, taking out a $2 million loan to fund its push. The group is spending money on television advertisements, phone calls, campaign mailings and other political efforts, helped by a Supreme Court decision that loosened restrictions on campaign spending.

”We’re the big dog,” said Larry Scanlon, the head of AFSCME’s political operations. ”But we don’t like to brag.”

A recent Gallup poll piled on bad news for President Obama. At the beginning of 2010 the president enjoyed support from 69% of Hispanics. By May that number was down to 57%. Now just 55% of Hispanics support the president and his liberal agenda.

But what’s going on behind the numbers could possibly be a harbinger of doom for Obama’s re-election in 2012. Across the country conservative Latino organizations are springing up as fast as illegal immigrants are streaming across the border. And these organizations are not content to just conduct meetings and complain about the liberal takeover in Washington. Some are taking action. In Dallas, Amigos de Patriots is launching an online and TV ad campaign called “Vote your Values, Vote Conservative.” The idea is to remind Hispanics that their ancestors fled countries where prosperity was killed by left-wing regimes. The 30-second spots also take on social issues like abortion, a practice that is dear to liberals and Democrats but that the Latino community at large finds offensive.

“In 2006, 17 categories favored Democrats, which helped them take control of the House and Senate from Republicans. Democrats picked up six Senate seats and 30 House seats.

In the Pew Poll, 23 of the 28 categories of voters now favor Republicans. What’s more, 22 of the 28 categories support the GOP by 49 percent or more. There are only four categories of voters that are under 40 percent: those making less than $30,000 a year, at 39 percent; voters who are unaffiliated with a religion, at 37 percent; black voters, at 10 percent; and Democrats, at 8 percent.

What is most remarkable is how far some categories have swung away from Democrats and toward the GOP.

Democrats have lost a significant advantage with women voters, who supported Democrats by a 48 to 41 percent margin in 2006, but who have now flipped to supporting the GOP by 49 to 43 percent.

Voters over 65 years old were for Democrats by a 48 to 42 percent margin four years ago. They now favor Republicans by 52 to 38 percent. That’s a 20 point swing.

Perhaps most damaging for Democrats, they have suffered huge losses among Independents. Democrats were up 7 points in 2006, by 42 to 35 percent. They now are down 19 points, 49 to 30 percent. That’s a 26-point swing.

”The first: the tea party is not a ”threat” to the Republican Party, the tea party saved the Republican Party. In a broad sense, the tea party rescued it from being the fat, unhappy, querulous creature it had become, a party that didn’t remember anymore why it existed, or what its historical purpose was. The tea party, with its energy and earnestness, restored the GOP to itself.

In a practical sense, the tea party saved the Republican Party in this cycle by not going third-party. It could have. The broadly based, locally autonomous movement seems to have made a rolling decision, group by group, to take part in Republican primaries and back Republican hopefuls. (According to the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, four million more Republicans voted in primaries this year than Democrats, the GOP’s highest such turnout since 1970. I wonder who those people were?)

Because of this, because they did not go third-party, Nov. 2 is not going to be a disaster for the Republicans, but a triumph.

The tea party did something the Republican establishment was incapable of doing: It got the party out from under George W. Bush. The tea party rejected his administration’s spending, overreach and immigration proposals, among other items, and has become only too willing to say so. In doing this, the tea party allowed the Republican establishment itself to get out from under Mr. Bush: ”We had to, boss, it was a political necessity!” They released the GOP establishment from its shame cringe.

And they not only freed the Washington establishment, they woke it up. That establishment, composed largely of 50- to 75-year-olds who came to Washington during the Reagan era in a great rush of idealism, in many cases stayed on, as they say, not to do good but to do well. They populated a conservative infrastructure that barely existed when Reagan was coming up: the think tanks and PR groups, the media outlets and governmental organizations. They did not do what conservatives are supposed to do, which is finish their patriotic work and go home, taking the knowledge and sophistication derived from Washington and applying it to local problems. (This accounts in part for the esteem in which former Bush budget chief and current Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is held. He went home.) “

On a personal note: The material for this post ended up being nearly 60 pages full of quotes, facts, figures, links, videos, reference material etc. Why? Because this is an important subject – directly for the future of the American people and your way of life, indirectly for the rest of the world. But this is way too much to make a meaningful and readable blog post. So I had to drastically cut it down and split it up. My only hope is that I got it reasonable right, you are the judge of that.

So I split this post into different parts: You must vote, The campaign, The voter fraud, Dirtiest election ever, Some points on the economic situation, The Government, All these lies about Obama Care, The speech by Robert Bidinotto and the article by P. J. O’Rourke

You must vote

So go and vote for some you can trust (yeah I know it’s hard), some one that upholds the constitution and knows what it actually means (yeah, there are not many left), some one that want to rein in the Big Government Agenda and REALLY means it (yeah I know, there are many turncoats), and some one that want to protect YOUR liberty, freedom and the American way of life (yeah, that’s another hard one).

There is in the end only one way you can judge them – By their actions.

Your vote REALLY MATTERS! This time more than ever!

Sooo much is at stake this time – The constitution, the American way of life with freedom and free markets. America is at a crucial crossroads.

Do you want a government for the elites, of the elites and by the elites?

Or a government for the people, of the people and by the people?

It is YOUR CHOICE! A very clear choice! You have to get out and flood the voting booths November 2.

And if you don’t choose, it’s going to be the former.

The turnout of voting-age population in the mid term elections 2006 – 37,1%, and 2002 – 37.0% was pathetic and a joke. 63 % of the voting age population apparently doesn’t care what is happening to their country.

If you don’t wake up now when will you ever do? You have to stand up for freedom and liberty. Or sit back and let the American dream become a nightmare.

Five quotations come to mind. All apply describing the present situation:

”All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” Thomas Jefferson 1743-1826.

”No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 – 1962) from her book ”This Is My Story”, 1937.

”It is incredible how as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedomthat it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say … that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement.” Etienne de la Boetie’s (French judge, writher, philosopher and “politician” during the16 century), The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude.

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Benjamin Franklin 1706–1790, was written sometime shortly before February 17,1775 as part of his notes for a proposition at the Pennsylvania Assembly.

”Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom”. – Albert Einstein

“President Obama, one of the men behind the Biggest Heist in American History – Cap and Trade, and who at ALL COSTS want to ram through the cap and trade bill, has now put in place an administrative system that allows him, at will, to totally bypass Congress.

After the EPA, Health care bill and now the financial bill, they can sneak it trough in big chunks through administrative orders. Not the whole cap and trade bill at once, but in two, tree maybe four steps.

America, your whole system has been hijacked, and you have done nothing, so far, to stop it. What the Obama administration has done during the last one and half year makes a mockery of your constitution and the principle of separation of power.”

These are the “representatives” that rammed through the Obama Care, the financial bill, etc., against the will of the people. They don’t care about the constitution, and they don’t know the difference between the declaration of Independence and the Constitution; and they don’t care that they don’t know. (see for example my post Obama Care 30)

The people in congress who voted for these bills, this is EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANTED AND INTENDED with these bills. But to get it through Congress they gladly and willfully lied through their teeth and ears, they even gladly put their lies in writing.

Why? Because they are ramming through their political agenda which they have been waiting and planning so long for to be able do.

As I have been saying all along, it has always been a political agenda – anti human, anti freedom, anti development and anti capitalism.And this Global Warming Hysteria is part of that agenda.It has nothing to do with science, facts or saving the environment or the Earth.

All of this, as always, paid by us, the common people, in the form of taxes, high energy costs and reducing our living standard back to the Stone Age.

And these guys spends billions and TRILLIONS of $ of our tax money.

While they at the same time preach austerity, frugality and sacrifice from us, the taxpayers.

This blatant hypocrisy is so mind numbing that it would be laughable if it weren’t for the fact that these people have the power to force us to obey them.

They are a truly parasitic class in the sense that Karl Marx wrote about it.

How ironic that today most of this parasitic class is leftists and so called “liberals”.

In fact, it is the PERFECT scam and heist – the more they can get you to feel guilty, the more money they earn. And the more control they get over society.

In short, it is very troubling to see a country on a path of economic and political self destruction. But if the present trend continues you are, to put it simple: toast.

It’s time for the people of America to take their country back. Otherwise the consequences for you as a country are going to be devastating. Especially for the common people.

Meanwhile, we STILL await Mr. Obama’s explanation why if his ”historic” health care law is so great for America, it’s not good enough for him and his family.

I have written many, many posts in this blog about the intimidation of people and blatant censoring of facts done in the name of ”science” and Global Warming Hysteria. And that the Global Waming Hysteria has nothing to do with saving the Earth or the environment. It has always been a political agenda.

I have written extensible (over 120 of posts) about the scam called Cap and Trade, – the Biggest Heist in History- where BOTH BUYER AND SELLER BENEFITS FROM CHEATING. And we, as taxpayers and consumers pay the prize. It’s an open invitation to fraud and manipulation.

And recognize it for what it is – A GIANT FINANCIAL SCAMthat puts all the burden on the common people and does nothing whatsoever for the environment.

The European model is a carnival of corruption, profiteering, speculation and multi-billion-dollar fraud. It’s done nothing to improve the environment while handing undeserved profits to big business and driving up the cost of energy to consumers.

What they are really advocating is huge price increases in the cost of energy, meaning the cost of everything.

That’s it. That’s their plan.

Anything else they say is a lie.

This is a scam to enrich the corrupt.

As always – Follow the money.

Here are some good videos on the big company, organisations and political money behind the Global Warming Hysteria.

I have written many, many posts in this blog about the intimidation of people and blatant censoring of facts done in the name of ”science” and Global Warming Hysteria. And that the Global Waming Hysteria has nothing to do with saving the Earth or the environment. It has always been a political agenda.

I have written extensible (over 120 of posts) about the scam called Cap and Trade, – the Biggest Heist in History- where BOTH BUYER AND SELLER BENEFITS FROM CHEATING. And we, as taxpayers and consumers pay the prize. It’s an open invitation to fraud and manipulation.

And recognize it for what it is – A GIANT FINANCIAL SCAMthat puts all the burden on the common people and does nothing whatsoever for the environment.

The European model is a carnival of corruption, profiteering, speculation and multi-billion-dollar fraud. It’s done nothing to improve the environment while handing undeserved profits to big business and driving up the cost of energy to consumers.

What they are really advocating is huge price increases in the cost of energy, meaning the cost of everything.

“Since 1988, when the greatest scare the world has seen got under way,hundreds of billions of pounds have been poured into academic research projects designed not to test the CO2 warming thesis but to take it as a given fact, and to use computer models to make its impacts seem as scary as possible.

The new global ”carbon trading” market, already worth $126 billion a year, could soon be worth trillions.Governments, including our own, are calling for hundreds of billions more to be chucked into absurd ”carbon-saving” energy schemes, with the cost to be met by all of us in soaring taxes and energy bills.

With all this mighty army of gullible politicians, dutiful officials, busy carbon traders, eager ”renewables” developers and compliant, funding-hungry academics standing to benefit from the greatest perversion of the principles of true science the world has ever seen, who are we to protest that their emperor has no clothes? (How apt that that fairy tale should have been written in Copenhagen.)

Let all that fluffy white ”global warming” continue to fall from the skies, while people shiver in homes that, increasingly, they will find they can no longer afford to heat. We have called into being a true Frankenstein’s monster.It will take a mighty long time to cut it down to size.”

“It has always baffled me that all the good scientists out there mostly in silence allow the shenanigans and charlatans of there craft to destroy the creditability of science as a whole.

A very good description in today’s The Australian of the sad state of the so called “science” behind the Global Warming Hysteria. And the medias and politicians roll in spreading this gospel.

And the censorship and intimidation from the press, media, politicians and fellow “scientists” of everyone who has opposed this hysteria.

I all along have said that this Global Warming Hysteria has nothing to do with science, facts, or saving the environment. It’s all a political agenda. An anti human, anti development and anti freedom agenda. They also hate the capitalistic system for obvious reasons.”

”Of course, the root of this whole thing is money,” Spann said. ”And, there is a vast amount of wealth being generated by this whole issue. And I always recommend to folks – if anyone speaks on the subject, get a disclosure and find out their financial interests in it.”

He pointed to former Vice President Al Gore as an example of how money behind climate change and global warming alarmism can perpetuate a theory that shouldn’t warrant as much merit otherwise.

”I’m not a politician, don’t understand it – I honestly don’t know,” Spann said. ”But, I will tell you that there’s a lot of people who have gotten very, very wealthy – filthy rich off this subject. I think former Vice President [Al Gore] collects a minimum of $200,000 per speech on this and all of this money – it can corrupt anybody, and I just think it’s all about money.”

Well, finally, more and more real scientists are revolting against the corruption and politicization of science. The latest example is Harold Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Physics.

“What has this to do with APS? In 2007 the APS Council adopted a Statement on global warming (also reproduced at the tinyurl site mentioned above) that was based largely on the scientific work that is now revealed to have been corrupted. (The principals in this escapade have not denied what they did, but have sought to dismiss it by saying that it is normal practice among scientists. You know and we know that that is simply untrue. Physicists are not expected to cheat.)”

“None of us would use corrupted science in our own work, nor would we sign off on a thesis by a student who did so. This is not only a matter of science, it is a matter of integrity, and the integrity of the APS is now at stake.”

Dissenting members ask APS to put their policy statement on ice due to Climategate

To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society

6 October 2010

Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave.It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion.I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge?It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer ”explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.

5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.

6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club.Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary was interviewed today by the Independent on “Global warming”:

”The scientific community has nearly always been wrong in history anyway. In the Middle Ages, they were going to excommunicate Galileo because the entire scientific community said the Earth was flat… I mean, it is absolutely bizarre that the people who can’t tell us what the fucking weather is next Tuesday can predict with absolute precision what the fucking global temperatures will be in 100 years’ time. It’s horseshit.”

”Nobody can argue that there isn’t climate change. The climate’s been changing since time immemorial,” he said.

”Do I believe there is global warming? No, I believe it’s all a load of bullshit. But it’s amazing the way the whole fucking eco-warriors and the media have changed. It used to be global warming, but now, when global temperatures haven’t risen in the past 12 years, they say ‘climate change’.”

”Well, hang on, we’ve had an ice age. We’ve also had a couple of very hot spells during the Middle Ages, so nobody can deny climate change. But there’s absolutely no link between man-made carbon, which contributes less than 2 per cent of total carbon emissions [and climate change].”

He suggested scientists had invented and perpetuated the theory in order to gain research grants. ”Scientists argue there is global warming because they wouldn’t get half of the funding they get now if it turns out to be completely bogus,” he said.

”The scientific community has nearly always been wrong in history anyway. In the Middle Ages, they were going to excommunicate Galileo because the entire scientific community said the Earth was flat… I mean, it is absolutely bizarre that the people who can’t tell us what the fucking weather is next Tuesday can predict with absolute precision what the fucking global temperatures will be in 100 years’ time. It’s horseshit.”

He mocked global warming campaigners, describing the United Nations as ”one of the world’s most useless organisations”, its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as ”utter tosh”, and US politician Al Gore as someone who ”couldn’t even get fucking re-elected” after a boom.

“President Obama, one of the men behind the Biggest Heist in American History – Cap and Trade, and who at ALL COSTS want to ram through the cap and trade bill, has now put in place an administrative system that allows him, at will, to totally bypass Congress

After the EPA, Health care bill and now the financial bill, they can sneak it trough in big chunks through administrative orders. Not the whole cap and trade bill at once, but in two, tree maybe four steps.

America, your whole system has been hijacked, and you have done nothing, so far, to stop it. What the Obama administration has done during the last one and half year makes a mockery of your constitution and the principle of separation of power.”

These are the “representatives” that rammed through the Obama Care, the financial bill, etc., against the will of the people. They don’t care about the constitution, and they don’t know the difference between the declaration of Independence and the Constitution; and they don’t care that they don’t know.

The people in congress who voted for these bills, this is EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANTED AND INTENDED with these bills. But to get it through Congress they gladly and wilfully lied through their teeth and ears, they even gladly put their lies in writing.

Why? Because they are ramming through their political agenda which they have been waiting and planning so long for to be able do.

As I have been saying all along, it has always been a political agenda – anti human, anti freedom, anti development and anti capitalism. And this Global Warming Hysteria is part of that agenda. It has nothing to do with science, facts or saving the environment or the Earth.

All of this, as always, paid by us, the common people, in the form of taxes, high energy costs and reducing our living standard back to the Stone Age.

And these guys spends billions and TRILLIONS of $ of our tax money.

While they at the same time preach austerity, frugality and sacrifice from us, the taxpayers.

This blatant hypocrisy is so mind numbing that it would be laughable if it weren’t for the fact that these people have the power to force us to obey them.

They are a truly parasitic class in the sense that Karl Marx wrote about it.

How ironic that today most of this parasitic class is leftists and so called “liberals”.

In fact, it is the PERFECT scam and heist – the more they can get you to feel guilty, the more money they earn. And the more control they get over society.

In short, it is very troubling to see a country on a path of economic and political self destruction. But if the present trend continues you are, to put it simple: toast.

Just one small example – the increase in federal taxes and regulations (EPA, Healthcare etc.), the cost of running a business has increased so much during the last year that it has become in many ways uninteresting. On top of that, the huge tax increases that is coming January first next year.

Not to speak about all the uncertainties what is going to happen in the near future.

As more and more people are discovering this and becoming aware of this the biggest heist in American history (see the letter below), President Obama, and his administration, is not doing so well. His approval index is at bottom. As is all the other indicators (see below).

It’s time for the people of America to take their country back. Otherwise the consequences for you as a country are going to be devastating. Especially for the common people. .

Meanwhile, we STILL await Mr. Obama’s explanation why if his ”historic” health care law is so great for America, it’s not good enough for him and his family.

In today’s dangerous world, we need a president with experience, leadership and courage. Unfortunately, you have shown us little of those traits.

Your childhood and younger years denied you the opportunity to grow up as an American man, and that is no fault of your own. Unfortunately, your lack of empathy for and experience of a traditional American upbringing has left you out of touch with those of us who grew up learning the traditions and work ethic of our predecessors.

You have never accepted the honor of military service, or held and survived in any sort of entry-level working position. You are bereft of many of the basic building blocks of a true American personality and worldview.

You have never experienced the icy hand of fear caressing your gut during a firefight when your very survival from second to second depends on your luck, wits, fellow troopers and the grace of God. You have never sweated out a payroll when your receivables are late.

You’ve missed the rewarding feeling of flogging a loaded truck all night to deliver a load 500 miles away at 7 a.m. You never shoveled cow manure for less than minimum wage to earn enough for a rattletrap car. You missed out on greasing dump trucks on the night shift, and never had the opportunity to start out cleaning restrooms and sweeping floors in a factory.

Your education was in the law, and you ignored any opportunity to absorb the lessons of history or the theories of economics. You have never experienced the law of the jungle in the private sector.

While you play golf and basketball and surround yourself with ”the swells” enjoying concerts in the People’s House, those of us in the general public dine on Spam and Costco burgers. I can’t put my wife on a 747 and send her to Spain so she can be ready to spend 10 days on Martha’s Vineyard when she gets back. She works seven days a week and so do I — spreading four full- and part-time jobs between us to make ends meet.

(My explanation: ”Let them eat cake” is the traditional translation of the French phrase ”Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”, supposedly said by a French princess upon learning that the peasants had no bread. As brioche is a luxury bread enriched with eggs and butter, it would reflect the princess’s obliviousness to the nature of a famine.)

I watch in pain while my business venture slides into oblivion and my small IRA erodes as your economic policies push the nation into a double-dip recession. This economy is locking up again, and you cannot blame former President Bush. The great construction jobs I created are ending while you pour trillions in borrowed money into the public sector to buy votes. I blame you personally for appointing the ship of fools you have as Cabinet officials and advisers.

You are repeating the gross mistakes of Japan in the ’90s and the Roosevelt administration in the ’30s — both of which failed and lengthened severe economic problems for a decade or more. You are intentionally smothering our private sector with regulations, taxes and mandates at the same time you squander the wages and futures of our children and grandkids.

I deplore your continued efforts to divide the greatest nation of immigrants in the world along race and class lines. Pandering to various groups and attempting to set them against other Americans is demagoguery at its worst. I sincerely hope such actions end up damaging you in the end and not our country.

You will leave office with a big pension, Secret Service protection and